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This article may be too long to comfortably read and navigate. Please consider splitting content into sub-articles and using this article for a summary of the key points of the subject. (June 2008) |
In the Middle Ages,1 science progressed dramatically from the time of antiquity in areas as diverse as astronomy, medicine, and mathematics. Whereas the ancient cultures of the world (i.e. those prior to the fall of Rome and the dawn of Islam) had developed many of the foundations of science, it was during the Middle Ages that the scientific method was born and science became a formal discipline separate from philosophy.234 Although there were scientific discoveries throughout the world, the Islamic world around the Mediterranean and China led the early Medieval age in major accomplishments thanks to scholars such as Alhazen and Shen Kuo, while India also made advances in astronomy, mathematics and medicine. From the 12th century onwards, scientists in western Europe began to slowly make good their deficits in comparison to the Chinese and Islamic scientists, a process that would take nearly four hundred years.
The Byzantine Empire, which was the most sophisticated culture during antiquity, suffered dramatic losses limiting its scientific prowess during the Medieval period. Christian Western Europe had suffered a catastrophic loss of knowledge following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But thanks to the Church scholars such as Aquinas and Buridan, the West carried on at least the spirit of scientific inquiry which would later lead to Europe's taking the lead in science during the Scientific Revolution using translations of medieval works.
Contents |
Major accomplishments
Although there were numerous scientific accomplishments during the Middle Ages the following are notable discoveries which advanced the world of science.
- Scientific method — The scientific method, as systematic approach to theory and experimentation, developed during the Middle Ages due to the work of scholars such as Alhazen,2 Biruni, Bacon,56 and Robert Grosseteste, who produced a systemized process of scientific enquiry based upon observation, experimentation and verification of hypotheses.7
- Arithmetic and Algebra — the Islamic scholar Al-Khwarizmi was the author of two books that changed the face of both Islamic and European mathematics. His “De numero indorum” (which only exists in Latin translation; no Arabic original is known) introduced the Hindu decimal place value number system first into the Arab world in the 9th Century and then into Europe in the 12th Century. His “al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala” was a compendium of basic algebra, a word taken from the title of the book, drawn from Babylonian, Greek and Indian sources. In it he demonstrates how to solve linear and quadratic equations but only those with positive solutions. Brahmagupta, one of his main sources, was already dealing with negative solutions in the 7th Century. Later Islamic mathematicians extended Al-Khwarizmi’s results to those polynomials of higher degree that could be reduced to quadratics through substitution. His arithmetic was taught as Algorithmus, a corruption of his name, in mediaeval universities as a part of computus. His arithmetic and algebra were popularised in Europe through the publication of the Liber abbaci by Leonardo of Pisa in the 13th century.8 9 .
- Differential calculus — The concepts of tangential lines and infinitesimals were developed by the ancient Greeks including Archimedes; however, it was Medieval scholars, notably Bhaskara, that developed the basic mathematical framework for modern differential calculus.1011
- Mechanics — In the 6th Century, John Philoponus in his critique of Aristotle’s theory of motion, introduced the concept of “impressed force” to explain why thrown objects continued to move after losing contact with the thrower. This theory of impetus was modified by Islamic scholars such as Avicenna in the 11th century, who theorized the concept of momentum,12 as well as by Avempace—who developed the concept of a reaction force13— and Abu’l Barakat— who developed the concept that force applied continuously produces acceleration14— in the 12th century. These concepts were adopted by various western thinkers, achieving their most developed form in the hands of Jean Buridan in the 14th century. Galileo further developed this into the theory of inertia, which after further modification, through Descartes, became Newton’s First Law of Motion.15
- Optics — the Greeks treated optics as three independent disciplines: theories of philosophical or physical optics (the atomists, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics); physiological theories of the eye (Galen); and geometrical optics (Euclid, Hero of Alexandria, and Ptolemaeus).16 In the 10th Century the Islamic polymath Alhazen became the first thinker to combine all three fields into an integrated science of optics.17 This was however not just a work of synthesis, as he made original contribution to the field. Whereas the Greeks had merely assumed the linear propagation of light, Alhazen proved it with empirical experiments. In the 13th Century Robert Grosseteste developed a unified theory of light based on the works of Al-Kindi and Ptolemaeus.18 Roger Bacon adopted Grosseteste's theories and expanded them to include the optics of Alhazen.19 John Pecham and Witelo expanded on Bacon's work20 and provided the fundament on which Kepler erected the modern theory of optics21.
- Modern surgery — Although the first known surgical text was written by Sushruta in antiquity, Medieval researchers, especially Abulcasis, developed the techniques and tools that led to modern surgical practices (e.g. double-edged scalpel, syringe, vaginal speculum, etc.).22 The 1266 work Chirurgia, (Surgery), by Theodoric Borgognoni advocates antiseptic surgery, in opposition to the Arab belief in "laudable pus."23
- Alchemy & chemistry — As with other disciplines, alchemy and chemistry in Islam was drawn from multiple sources: Egyptian, Greek, Indian and Chinese, and as with other disciplines the whole was significantly greater than the parts. Islamic culture created a vast corpus of alchemic literature that through transfer into Europe during the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance had a major effect on the development of science. The most influential texts were the so-called Jaberian corpus (much of which was written in the 10th century by the Ism’iliya, or Brotherhood of Purity), the Summa Perfectionis of Paulus de Tarento and the Secret of Secrets of al-Razi. The first two introduced atomism and the sulphur-mercury theory as competitors to Aristotle’s theory of matter. Al-Razi described many of the methods and much of the equipment that formed the basis of work in chemistry, metallurgy and pharmacology up to the middle of the 19th century.24
- Trigonometry — developed in ancient times by Hipparchus, Menelaus and Ptolemaeus in order to facilitate their astronomical calculations. In Greek trigonometry, angles were represented by the chords of a circle. Menelaus laid the foundations for spherical trigonometry in his Sphaerica whilst Ptolemaeus produced the most extensive ancient trigonometry text as part of his Syntaxis Mathematike.25 Hindu mathematicians, who may have borrowed much from Greek astronomy, replaced the Greek chordal trigonometry with half-chords producing the equivalent of our sine and cosine. The most important Hindu trigonometry texts are the Surya Siddhanta (4th Century), the Aryabhatiya (5th Century) and the Siddhanta Shiromani (12th Century); as with the Greeks, all of these are astronomy texts.2627 The Islamic mathematicians and astronomers took over the mathematical astronomy of Ptolemaeus, Aryabhata and Brahmagupta, and introduced the secant, cosecant, tangent and cotangent. In the 13th century, al-Tusi produced the first complete work on planar and spherical trigonometry, treating it as a discrete mathematical discipline independent of astronomy.28 Trigonometry was introduced to Western Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century, and later came into wider use due to Peurbach and Regiomontanus in the middle of the 15th century. Like the Islamic astronomers, they replaced the Ptolemaic chordal trigonometry with Hindu-Arabic half-chord trigonometry.
- Technologies for navigation — Although primitive versions of the technologies were known in antiquity, it was during the Middle Ages that key technologies such as the latitude-independent astrolabe (Arzachel) and the portable compass (Shen Kuo) were developed as practical tools for navigation, especially on the open seas.2930 In the thirteenth century Peter of Maricourt made two major innovations to improve the accuracy and practicality of the magnetic compass by adding a calibrated scale and placing the magnet on a pivot. 31
- Accurate lunar models — The motions of the moon and planets had been studied for millenia. The Middle Ages produced the first model of lunar motion (developed by Ibn al-Shatir) which matched physical observations. This and other developments in planetary models are believed to have been used by the Renaissance astronomer Copernicus.32
- Incendiary weapons and bombs — The use of fire and flammable materials in warfare are as old as mankind itself but the Middle Ages took the science from simple recipes and brute force approaches to sophisticated formulae and devices. These included everything from flamethrowers (developed in the Byzantine Empire and China) to land/sea mines and solid-fuel rockets (developed in China).3334
Because of the decline of the Byzantine Empire and the medieval Muslim empires much of the scientific progress of the Middle Ages became "lost" (i.e. the expertise but not necessarily the texts) until it was rediscovered by Europe during the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.
Western Europe
As Roman imperial authority effectively ended in the West during the 5th century, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production dramatically. Most classical scientific treatises of classical antiquity written in Greek were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. Notwithstanding, with the beginning of the Renaissance of the 12th century, interest in natural investigation was renewed. Science developed in this golden period of Scholastic philosophy focused on logic and advocated empiricism, perceiving nature as a coherent system of laws that could be explained in the light of reason. With this view the medieval men of science went in search of explanations for the phenomena of the universe and achieved important advances in areas such as scientific methodology and physics, among many others. These advances, however, were suddenly interrupted by the Black Plague and are virtually unknown to the lay public of today, partly because most theories advanced in medieval science are today obsolete, and partly because of the stereotype of Middle Ages as supposedly "Dark Ages".
Early Middle Ages (AD 476–1000)
See also: Medieval medicine, Medieval philosophy The Western Roman Empire, although united by Latin as a common language, still harbored a great number of different cultures that were not completely assimilated by the Roman culture. Debilitated by migrations, barbarian invasions and the political disintegration of Rome in the 5th century, and isolated from the rest of the world by the spread of Islam in the 7th century, the European West became a tapestry of rural populations and semi-nomad peoples. The political instability and the downfall of urban life had a strong, negative impact on the cultural life of the continent. The Catholic Church, being the only institution to survive the process, maintained what was left of intellectual strength, especially through monasticism. Until the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Western Europe, excepting the Muslim lands, would lag far behind the scientific knowledge of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire and the Muslim empires.
In the ancient world, Greek was the primary language of science. Even under the Roman Empire, Latin texts were mainly compilations drawing on earlier Greek work; while advanced scientific research and teaching continued to be carried on in the Hellenistic side of the empire, in Greek. Late Roman attempts to translate Greek writings into Latin had limited success.35
As the knowledge of Greek declined during the transition to the Middle Ages, the Latin West found itself cut off from its Greek philosophical and scientific roots. Most scientific inquiry came to be based on information gleaned from sources which were often incomplete and posed serious problems of interpretation. Latin-speakers who wanted to learn about science only had access to books by such Roman writers as Chalcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and later Latin encyclopedists. Much had to be gleaned from non-scientific sources: Roman surveying manuals were read for what geometry was included.36
Deurbanization reduced the scope of education and by the sixth century teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools, with the center of education being the study of the Bible.37 Education of the laity survived modestly in Italy, Spain, and the southern part of Gaul, where Roman influences were most long-lasting. In the seventh century, learning began to emerge in Ireland and the Celtic lands, where Latin was a foreign language and Latin texts were eagerly studied and taught.38
The leading scholars of the early centuries were clergymen for whom the study of nature was but a small part of their interest. They lived in an atmosphere which provided little institutional support for the disinterested study of natural phenomena and they concentrated their attention on religious topics. The study of nature was pursued more for practical reasons than as an abstract inquiry: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs,39 the need for monks to determine the proper time to pray led them to study the motion of the stars,40 the need to compute the date of Easter led them to study and teach rudimentary mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon.41 Modern readers may find it disconcerting that sometimes the same works discuss both the technical details of natural phenomena and their symbolic significance.42
Around 800, the first attempt at rebuilding Western culture occurred (see: Carolingian Renaissance). Charles the Great, having succeeded at uniting a great portion of Europe under his domain, and in order to further unify and strengthen the Frankish Empire, decided to carry out a reform in education. The English monk Alcuin of York elaborated a project of scholarly development aimed at resuscitating classical knowledge by establishing programs of study based upon the seven liberal arts: the trivium, or literary education (grammar, rhetoric and dialectic) and the quadrivium, or scientific education (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music). From the year 787 on, decrees began to circulate recommending, in the whole empire, the restoration of old schools and the founding of new ones. Institutionally, these new schools were either under the responsibility of a monastery, a cathedral or a noble court.
However, the 840s saw renewed disorder, with the breakup of the Frankish Empire and the beginning of a new cycle of barbarian raids. The significance of Charlemagne's educational measures would only be felt centuries later. The teaching of dialectic (a discipline that corresponds to today's logic) was responsible for the rebirth of the interest in speculative inquiry; from this interest would follow the rise of the Scholastic tradition of Christian philosophy. Moreover, in the 12th and 13th centuries, many of those schools founded under the auspices of Charles the Great, especially the cathedral schools, would become universities.
High Middle Ages (AD 1000–1300)
- See also: Renaissance of the 12th century, Latin translations of the 12th century, and Medieval technology
By the year 1000 AD, western Europe remained a scientific backwater compared to certain other civilizations, including those of Christian Byzantium, and the Islamic world. While Constantinople's population exceeded 300,000, Rome had a mere 35,000 and Paris only 20,000. [1][2] However, Christianization of the continent was making rapid progress and would eventually prove to be the long-term solution to the problem of barbarian raiding. Western Europe became more politically organized and would see a rapid increase in population during the next centuries, which brought about great social and political changes.
The cultural scenario started to change after the Reconquista and during the Crusades, as interaction with the Arabs brought Europeans into contact with ancient Greek, Roman/Byzantine and Arabic manuscripts. During the 800s and 900s, a mass of classical Greek texts were translated by Muslim scholars into Arabic, followed by a flurry of commentaries and independent works by Islamic thinkers. Around 1050, further translation into Latin had begun in Northern Spain, and the recapture of Toledo and Sicily by the Christian kingdoms near the end of the century allowed the translation to begin in earnest by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. Scholars came from around Europe to aid in translation.
Gerard of Cremona is a good example: an Italian who came to Spain to copy a single text, he stayed on to translate some seventy works.43 His biography describes how he came to Toledo: "There, seeing the abundance of books in Arabic on every subject and regretting the poverty of the Latins in these things, he learned the Arabic language, in order to be able to translate." 44
This period also saw the birth of medieval universities, which aided materially in the translation, preservation and propagation of the texts of the ancients and became a new infrastructure for scientific communities. Some of these new universities were registered as an institution of international excellence by the Holy Roman Empire, receiving the title of Studium Generale. Most of the early Studia Generali were found in Italy, France, England, and Spain, and these were considered the most prestigious places of learning in Europe. This list quickly grew as new universities were founded throughout Europe. As early as the 13th century, scholars from a Studium Generale were encouraged to give lecture courses at other institutes across Europe and to share documents, and this led to the current academic culture seen in modern European universities.
The rediscovery of the works of Aristotle, alongside the works of medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers (such as Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides) allowed the full development of the new Christian philosophy and the method of scholasticism. By 1200 there were reasonably accurate Latin translations of the main works of Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Galen, that is, of all the intellectually crucial ancient authors except Thucydides, and many of the crucial medieval Arabic and Jewish texts, such as the main works of Geber, Al-Khwarizmi, Alkindus, Rhazes, Alhazen, Avicenna, Avempace, Averroes and Maimonides. During the thirteenth century, the natural philosophy of these texts began to be extended by notable Scholastics such as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Duns Scotus.
Scholastics believed in empiricism and supporting Roman Catholic doctrines through secular study, reason, and logic. The most famous was Thomas Aquinas (later declared a "Doctor of the Church"), who led the move away from the Platonic and Augustinian and towards Aristotelianism (although natural philosophy was not his main concern). Meanwhile, precursors of the modern scientific method can be seen already in Grosseteste's emphasis on mathematics as a way to understand nature and in the empirical approach admired by Roger Bacon.
Grosseteste was the founder of the famous Oxford franciscan school. He was the first scholastic to fully understand Aristotle's vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning. Concluding from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again: from universal laws to prediction of particulars. Grosseteste called this "resolution and composition". Further, Grosseteste said that both paths should be verified through experimentation in order to verify the principals. These ideas established a tradition that carried forward to Padua and Galileo Galilei in the 17th century.
Under the tuition of Grosseteste and inspired by the writings of Arab alchemists who had preserved and built upon Aristotle's portrait of induction, Bacon described a repeating cycle of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and the need for independent verification. He recorded the manner in which he conducted his experiments in precise detail so that others could reproduce and independently test his results - a cornerstone of the scientific method, and a continuation of the work of researchers like Al Battani.
Bacon and Grosseteste conducted investigations into optics, although much of it was similar to what was being done at the time by Arab scholars. Bacon did make a major contribution to the development of science in medieval Europe by writing to the Pope to encourage the study of natural science in university courses and compiling several volumes recording the state of scientific knowledge in many fields at the time. He described the possible construction of a telescope, but there is no strong evidence of his having made one.
Late Middle Ages (AD 1300–1500)
The first half of the 14th century saw the scientific work of great thinkers. The logic studies by William of Occam led him to postulate a specific formulation of the principle of parsimony, known today as Occam's Razor. This principle is one of the main heuristics used by modern science to select between two or more underdetermined theories.
As Western scholars became more aware (and more accepting) of controversial scientific treatises of the Byzantine and Islamic Empires these readings sparked new insights and speculation. The works of the early Byzantine scholar John Philoponus inspired Western scholars such as Jean Buridan to question the received wisdom of Aristotle's mechanics. Buridan developed the theory of impetus which was the first step towards the modern concept of inertia. Buridan anticipated Isaac Newton when he wrote:
- ...after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance, and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a contrary motion
Thomas Bradwardine and his partners, the Oxford Calculators of Merton College, distinguished kinematics from dynamics, emphasizing kinematics, and investigating instantaneous velocity. They first formulated the mean speed theorem: a body moving with constant velocity travels distance and time equal to an accelerated body whose velocity is half the final speed of the accelerated body. They also demonstrated this theorem -- essence of "The Law of Falling Bodies" -- long before Galileo is credited with this.
In his turn, Nicole Oresme showed that the reasons proposed by the physics of Aristotle against the movement of the earth were not valid and adduced the argument of simplicity for the theory that the earth moves, and not the heavens. In the whole of his argument in favor of the earth's motion Oresme is both more explicit and much clearer than that given two centuries latter by Copernicus. He was also the first to assume that color and light are of the same nature and the discoverer of the curvature of light through atmospheric refraction; even though, up to now, the credit for this latter achievement has been given to Hooke.
The historian of science Ronald Numbers notes that the modern scientific assumption of methodological naturalism can be also traced back to the work of these medieval thinkers:
- By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320–82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us." 45
However, a series of events that would be known as the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was under its way. When came the Black Death of 1348, it sealed a sudden end to the previous period of massive scientific change. The plague killed a third of the people in Europe, especially in the crowded conditions of the towns, where the heart of innovations lay. Recurrences of the plague and other disasters caused a continuing decline of population for a century.
Renaissance of the 15th century
The 15th century saw the beginning of the cultural movement of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of Greek scientific texts, both ancient and medieval, was accelerated as the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks and many Byzantine scholars sought refuge in the West, particularly Italy. Also, the invention of printing was to have great effect on European society: the facilitated dissemination of the printed word democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of new ideas.
But this initial period is usually seen as one of scientific backwardness.citation needed There were no new developments in physics or astronomy,citation needed and the reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe. Humanism stressed that nature came to be viewed as an animate spiritual creation that was not governed by laws or mathematics. At the same time philosophy lost much of its rigour as the rules of logic and deduction were seen as secondary to intuition and emotion.citation needed
It would not be until the Renaissance moved to Northern Europe that science would be revived, with such figures as Copernicus, Francis Bacon, and Descartes (though Descartes is often described as an early Enlightenment thinker, rather than a late Renaissance one).
Dark Ages?
In the 19th century, the entire Middle Ages were called the "Dark Age", expressing contempt for an anti-scientific, priest-ridden, superstitious time. However, a radical reevaluation occurred in the early 20th century, based on the wealth of information from the High and Late Middle Ages. When historians now use the term "Dark Ages" to refer to the Early Middle Ages, it is intended to express the idea that the period seems "dark" only because of the shortage of historical records compared with later times.
The stereotype of the entire Middle Ages as a "Dark Age" supposedly caused by the Christian Church for allegedly "placing the word of religious authorities over personal experience and rational activity" is called a caricature by the contemporary historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers46, who say "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led. There was no warfare between science and the church".47 Historian Edward Grant writes: "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities".48
For example, the claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was flat was first propagated in the 19th century49 and is still very common in popular culture. This claim is mistaken, as Lindberg and Numbers write: "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference."5049 Misconceptions such as: "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", and "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of the natural sciences", are all reported by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, even though they are not supported by current historical research.51
Great names of science in medieval Europe
Anthemius of Tralles (ca. 474 – ca. 534), a professor of geometry and architecture, authored many influential works on mathematics and was one of the architects of the famed Hagia Sophia, the largest building in the world at its time. His works were among the most important source texts in the Arab world and Western Europe for centuries after.
John Philoponus (ca. 490–ca. 570), also known as John the Grammarian, a Byzantine philosopher, launched a revolution in the understanding of physics by critiquing and correcting the earlier works of Aristotle. In the process he proposed important concepts such as a rudimentary notion of inertia and the invariant acceleration of falling objects. Although his works were repressed at various times in the Byzantine Empire, because of religious controversy, they would nevertheless become important to the understanding of physics throughout Europe and the Arab world.
Paul of Aegina (ca. 625–ca. 690), considered by some to be the greatest Byzantine surgeon, developed many novel surgical techniques and authored the medical encyclopedia Medical Compendium in Seven Books. The book on surgery in particular was the definitive treatise in Europe and the Islamic world for hundreds of years.
The Venerable Bede (ca. 672–735), monk of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow who wrote a work On the Nature of Things, several books on the mathematical / astronomical subject of computus, the most influential entitled On the Reckoning of Time. He made original discoveries concerning the nature of the tides and his works on computus became required elements of the training of clergy, and thus greatly influenced early medieval knowledge of the natural world.
Abbas Ibn Firnas (810 – 887), a polymath and inventor in Muslim Spain, made contributions in a variety of fields and is most known for his contributions to glass-making and aviation. He developed novel ways of manufacturing and using glass . He was also the first to attempt controlled flight by flying a primitive hang glider in 875 (the origin of the concept is often erroneously attributed to Bacon or da Vinci).
Pope Sylvester II (c. 946–1003), a scholar, teacher, mathematician, and later pope, reintroduced the abacus and armillary sphere to Western Europe after they had been lost for centuries following the Greco-Roman era. He was also responsible in part for the spread of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in Western Europe.
Maslamah al-Majriti (died 1008), a mathematician, astronomer, and chemist in Muslim Spain, made novel contributions in many areas, from new techniques for surveying to updating and improving the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi and inventing a process for producing mercury oxide.52 He is most famous, though, for having helped transmit knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to Muslim Spain and Christian Western Europe.
Abulcasis (936-1013), a physician and scientist in Muslim Spain, is considered to be the father of modern surgery. He wrote numerous medical texts, developed many innovative surgical instruments, and developed a variety of new surgical techniques and practices. His texts were considered the definitive works on surgery in Europe until the Renaissance.
Constantine the African (c. 1020–1087), a Christian native of Carthage, is best known for his translating of ancient Greek and Roman medical texts from Arabic into Latin while working at the Schola Medica Salernitana in Salerno, Italy. Among the works he translated were those of Hippocrates and Galen.
Arzachel (1028–1087), the foremost astronomer of the early second millennium, lived in Muslim Spain and greatly expanded the understanding and accuracy of planetary models and terrestrial measurements used for navigation. He developed key technologies including the equatorium and universal latitude-independent astrolabe.
Avempace (died 1138), a famous physicist from Muslim Spain who had an important influence on later physicists such as Galileo.53 He was the first to theorize the concept of a reaction force for every force exerted.13
Avenzoar (1091–1161), from Muslim Spain, was the earliest known experimental surgeon,54 for introducing an experimental method in surgery, as he was the first to employ animal testing in order to experiment with surgical procedures before applying them to human patients.55 He also performed the earliest dissections and postmortem autopsies on both humans as well as animals.56
Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253), Bishop of Lincoln, was the central character of the English intellectual movement in the first half of the 13th century and is considered the founder of scientific thought in Oxford. He had a great interest in the natural world and wrote texts on the mathematical sciences of optics, astronomy and geometry. In his commentaries on Aristotle's scientific works, he affirmed that experiments should be used in order to verify a theory, testing its consequences. Roger Bacon was influenced by his work on optics and astronomy.57
Albert the Great (1193–1280), Doctor Universalis, was one of the most prominent representatives of the philosophical tradition emerging from the Dominican Order. He is one of the thirty-three Saints of the Roman Catholic Church honored with the title of Doctor of the Church. He became famous for his vast knowledge and for his defence of the pacific coexistence between science and religion. Albert was an essential figure in introducing Greek and Islamic science into the medieval universities, although not without hesitation with regard to particular Aristotelian theses. In one of his most famous sayings he asserted: "Science does not consist in ratifying what others say, but of searching for the causes of phenomena." Thomas Aquinas was his most famous pupil.
Jordanus de Nemore (late 12th, early 13th century) was one of the major pure mathematicians of the Middle Ages. He wrote treatises on mechanics ("the science of weights"), on basic and advanced arithmetic, on algebra, on geometry, and on the mathematics of stereographic projection.
Roger Bacon (1214–94), Doctor Admirabilis, joined the Franciscan Order around 1240 where, influenced by Grosseteste, ibn Firnas and others, he dedicated himself to studies where he implemented the observation of nature and experimentation as the foundation of natural knowledge. Bacon was responsible for making the concept of "laws of nature" widespread, and contributed in such areas as mechanics, geography and, most of all, optics.
The optical research of Grosseteste and Bacon established optics as an area of study at the medieval university and formed the basis for a continuous tradition of research into optics that went all the way up to the beginning of the 17th century and the foundation of modern optics by Kepler.58
Ibn al-Baitar (died 1248), a botanist and pharmacist in Muslim Spain, researched over 1400 types of plants, foods, and drugs and compiled pharmaceutical and medical encyclopedias documenting his research. These were used in the Islamic world and Europe until the 19th century.
Thomas Aquinas (1227–74), Doctor Angelicus, was an Italian theologian and friar in the Dominican Order. As his mentor Albert the Great, he is a Catholic Saint and Doctor of the Church. His interests were not only in philosophy; he was also interested in alchemy, having written an important treatise titled Aurora Consurgens. However, his greatest contribution to the scientific development of the period was having been mostly responsible for the incorporation of Aristotelianism into the Scholastic tradition, and in particular his Commentary on Aristotle's Physics was responsible for developing one of the most important innovations in the history of physics, first posited by his mentor Averroes for celestial bodies only, namely the notion of the inertial resistant mass of all bodies universally, subsequently further developed by Kepler and Newton in the 17th century. (See Pierre Duhem's analysis The 12th century birth of the notion of mass which advised modern mechanics. from his Systeme Du Monde at [3])
John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), Doctor Subtilis, was a member of the Franciscan Order, philosopher and theologian. Emerging from the academic environment of the University of Oxford. where the presence of Grosseteste and Bacon was still palpable, he had a different view on the relationship between reason and faith as that of Thomas Aquinas. For Duns Scotus, the truths of faith could not be comprehended through the use of reason. Philosophy, hence, should not be a servant to theology, but act independently. He was the mentor of one of the greatest names of philosophy in the Middle Ages: William of Ockham.
William of Ockham (1285–1350), Doctor Invincibilis, was an English Franciscan friar, philosopher, logician and theologian. Ockham defended the principle of parsimony, which could already be seen in the works of his mentor Duns Scotus. His principle later became known as Occam's Razor and states that if there are various equally valid explanations for a fact, then the simplest one should be chosen. This became a foundation of what would come to be known as the scientific method and one of the pilars of reductionism in science. Ockham probably died of the Black Plague. Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme were his followers.
Jean Buridan (1300–58) was a French philosopher and priest. Although he was one of the most famous and influent philosophers of the late Middle Ages, his work today is not renowned by people other than philosophers and historians. One of his most significant contributions to science was the development of the theory of Impetus, that explained the movement of projectiles and objects in free-fall. This theory gave way to the dynamics of Galileo Galilei and for Isaac Newton's famous principle of Inertia.
Nicole Oresme (c. 1323–82) was an intellectual genius and perhaps the most original thinker of the 14th century. A theologian and bishop of Lisieux, he was one of the principal propagators of the modern sciences. Notwithstanding his strictly scientific contributions, Oresme strongly opposed astrology and speculated about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He was the last great European intellectual to live before the Black Plague, an event that had a very negative impact in the intellectual life of the ending period of the Middle Ages.
Byzantine world
Byzantine science played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy, and also in the transmission of medieval Arabic knowledge to Renaissance Italy.59 Its rich historiographical tradition preserved ancient knowledge upon which splendid art, architecture, literature and technological achievements were built.
Mathematics
Byzantine scientists preserved and continued the legacy of the great Ancient Greek mathematicians and put mathematics in practice. In early Byzantium (5th to 7th century) the architects and mathematicians Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles used complex mathematical formulas to construct the great “Agia Sophia” temple, a magnificent technological breakthrough for its time and for centuries afterwards due to its striking geometry, bold design and height. In late Byzantium (9th to 12th century) mathematicians like Michael Psellos considered mathematics as a way to interpret the world.
Islamic interactions
The Byzantine Empire initially provided the medieval Islamic world with Ancient Greek texts on astronomy and mathematics for translation into Arabic as the Empire was the leading center of scientific scholarship in the region in the early Middle Ages. Later as the Muslim world became the center of scientific knowledge, Byzantine scientists such as Gregory Choniades translated Arabic texts on Islamic astronomy, mathematics and science into Medieval Greek, including the works of Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, Ibn Yunus, al-Khazini (a Muslim scientist of Byzantine Greek descent),60 Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī61 and Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī among others. There were also some Byzantine scientists who used Arabic transliterations to describe certain scientific concepts instead of the equivalent Ancient Greek terms (such as the use of the Arabic talei instead of the Ancient Greek hososcopus). Byzantine science thus played an important role in not only transmitting ancient Greek knowledge to Western Europe and the Islamic world, but in also transmitting Islamic knowledge to Western Europe, such as the transmission of the Tusi-couple, which later appeared in the work of Nicolaus Copernicus.59 Byzantine scientists also became acquainted with Sassanid and Indian astronomy through citations in some Arabic works.60
Islamic world
Overview
In the Middle East, Greek philosophy was able to find some short-lived support by the newly created Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire). With the spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries, a period of Islamic scholarship lasted until the 15th century. In the Islamic World, the Middle Ages is known as the Islamic Golden Age, when Islamic civilization and Islamic scholarship flourished. This scholarship was aided by several factors. The use of a single language, Arabic, allowed communication without need of a translator. Translations of Greek texts from Egypt and the Byzantine Empire, and Sanskrit texts from India, provided Islamic scholars a knowledge base to build upon.
In earlier Islamic versions of the scientific method, ethics played an important role. Islamic scholars used previous work in medicine, astronomy and mathematics as bedrock to develop new fields such as algebra,62 chemistry,63 clinical pharmacology,64 experimental physics,65 sociology,66 and spherical trigonometry.67
Scientific method
Muslim scientists placed far greater emphasis on experiment than had the Greeks. This led to the scientific method being developed in the Muslim world,68 where significant progress in methodology was made, beginning with the experiments of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on optics, in his Book of Optics circa 1021.6970 The most important development of the scientific method was the use of experiments to distinguish between competing scientific theories set within a generally empirical orientation, which began among Muslim scientists. Ibn al-Haytham is also regarded as the father of optics, especially for his empirical proof of the intromission theory of light. Some have also described Ibn al-Haytham as the "first scientist" for his development of the scientific method.71
Alchemy and chemistry
Muslim chemists and alchemists played an important role in the foundation of modern chemistry. Scholars such as Will Durant and Alexander von Humboldt regard Muslim chemists to be founders of chemistry,7263 particularly Geber, who was a pioneer of chemistry,7374 for introducing an early experimental scientific method within the field, as well as the alembic, still, retort,75 and the chemical processes of pure distillation, filtration, sublimation,76 liquefaction, crystallisation, purification, oxidisation and evaporation.75
The study of traditional alchemy and the theory of the transmutation of metals were first refuted by al-Kindi,77 followed by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī,78 Avicenna,79 and Ibn Khaldun. In his Doubts about Galen, al-Razi was the first to prove both Aristotle's theory of classical elements and Galen's theory of humorism false using an experiment.80 Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī described an early version of the concept of conservation of mass, noting that a body of matter is able to change, but is not able to disappear.81
Applied sciences
In the applied sciences, a significant number of inventions and technologies were produced by medieval Muslim scientists and engineers such as Abbas Ibn Firnas, Taqi al-Din, and particularly al-Jazari, who is considered a pioneer in modern engineering.82