[daarut-tauhiid] Islam on Spotlihgt: A Golden Age in Science, Full of Light and Shadow

December 9, 2010
A Golden Age in Science, Full of Light and Shadow By EDWARD
ROTHSTEIN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/edward_rothstein/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

"Take a look," Ben
Kingsley<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/38383/Ben-Kingsley?inline=nyt-per>says,
dropping an ancient tome before three British students as if he were
teaching the Dark Arts at Hogwarts. "Take a look," he tells them, "if you
dare."

The book magically opens, releasing a cyclone of glittering ghosts. And Mr.
Kingsley — who here portrays a librarian trying to get bored students
interested in what their teacher calls the "Dark Ages" — is transformed into
the turbaned al-Jazari: 12th-century inventor, mechanical engineer,
visionary. "Welcome to the Dark Ages!" he declares, "or as it should be
known, the Golden Ages!"

After he takes the students "from darkness into light" in this introductory
film <http://www.1001inventions.com/media/video/library>, we are off and
running through "1001 Inventions," at the New York Hall of
Science<http://www.nysci.org/visit/events/1001>in Queens. The
exhibition's name invokes the Eastern exoticism of
Scheherazade, but the show is in earnest about its claims.

There aren't 1,001 inventions on display, but those that are, along with the
ideas described, are meant to show that the Western Dark Ages really were a
Golden Age of Islam: a thousand years, in the show's reckoning, that lasted
into the 17th century. During that era, the exhibition asserts, Muslim
scientists and inventors, living in empires reaching from Spain to China,
anticipated the innovations of the modern world.

There are serious problems with this exhibition, but this has had no effect
on its international acclaim. Conceived by a mechanical engineer, Salim T.
S. al-Hassani, it began on a smaller scale touring British cities. It
expanded into its current form at the London Science Museum this year,
attracting
400,000 visitors, <http://www.1001inventions.com/exhibition> according to
the show's Web site. And its lavish companion book, "Muslim Heritage in Our
World," has won plaudits.

Kiosks are arranged here in an 8,000-square-foot space, their explanations,
interactive displays, and videos examining seven "zones": Home, School,
Market, Hospital, Town, World, Universe. The show is also family friendly. A
20-foot-high reproduction of al-Jazari's mechanical water clock welcomes
visitors, its base an elephant and its crown a phoenix; unfortunately it is
not really a replica — it operates without the water mechanism — but its
playful monumentalism intrigues. And while some interactive exhibits are
stilted, an astronomy display lets you reach toward a screen of the night
sky like a deity, your gestures gliding a constellation into its proper
place.

Throughout, the exhibition pays tribute to an important scientific tradition
not commonly familiar, stocked with extraordinary technological creativity
and scholarly enterprise. From 10th-century Spain we read of al-Zahrawi,
author of an encyclopedic treatise on surgery. From 10th-century Baghdad we
find al-Haytham, whose explorations of optics helped lay the foundations for
Newton's discoveries. We learn of advances in medical care, mathematics,
astronomy and architecture.

As it turns out, though, the account requires extensive qualification. Had
we learned more about scientific principles, had we been given sober
assessments of, say, how 10th-century science developed, had a scholarly
perspective been more evident — had we, in other words, been ushered into
this world in a way once expected from science museums — the show could have
been far more powerful.

Instead, it is as manipulative as it is illuminating. "1001 Inventions," we
are told in the literature, "is a nonreligious and non-political project."
But it actually is a little bit religious and considerably political.

It is less a typical science exhibition than a typical "identity"
exhibition. It was created by the Foundation for Science, Technology and
Civilization in London, whose goal is "to popularize, spread and promote an
accurate account of Muslim Heritage <http://www.muslimheritage.com/> and its
contribution." The show also tries to "instill confidence" and provide
positive "role models" for young Muslims, as Mr. Hassani puts it in the
book. And it is part of a "global educational initiative" that includes
extensive classroom
materials.<http://www.1001inventions.com/media/teachers-pack>

The promotional goal is evident in every display. The repeated suggestion is
that Muslim scientists made discoveries later attributed to Westerners and
that many Western institutions were shaped by Muslim contributions.

The exhibition, though, wildly overdoes it. First, it creates a straw man,
reviving the notion, now defunct, of the Dark Ages. Then it overstates the
neglect of Muslim science, which has, to the contrary, long been cited in
Western scholarship. It also expands the Golden Age of Islam to a
millennium, though the bright years were once associated with just portions
of the Abbasid Caliphate, which itself lasted for about 500 years, from the
eighth century to 1258. The show's inflated ambitions make it difficult to
separate error from exaggeration, and implication from fact.

Consider one label: "Setting the Story Straight." We read: "For many
centuries, English medic William Harvey took the prize as the first person
to work out how our blood circulates." But "what nobody knew" was that the
"heart and lungs' role in blood flow" was figured out by Ibn al-Nafis, the
13th-century physician. And yes, al-Nafis's impressive work on pulmonary
circulation apparently fell into oblivion until 1924. But Harvey's
17th-century work was more complete; it was a theory of the entire
circulatory system. So while neglect is clear, differences should be as
well.

But the exhibition even seems to expand its claim. Historians, the label
continues, have recently found evidence that Ibn al-Nafis's Arabic text "may
have been translated into Latin, paving the way to suppose that it might
have indirectly influenced" Harvey's work. The "may have," the "suppose,"
the "might have" and the "indirectly" reflect an overwhelming impulse to
affirm what cannot be proved.

Sometimes Muslim precedence is suggested with even vaguer assertions. We
read that Ibn Sina, in the 11th century, speculated about geological
formations, "ideas that were developed, perhaps independently, by geologist
James Hutton in the 18th century." Why "perhaps independently"? Is there any
evidence of influence?<http://books.google.com/books?id=GBG7XDS5CbwC&lpg=PA26&dq=ibn%20sina%20and%20James%20hutton&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q=ibn%20sina%20and%20James%20hutton&f=false>Are
the analyses comparable? How? Nothing is clear other than a vague
sense
of wrongful neglect.

Some assertions go well beyond the evidence. Hovering above the show is a
glider grasped by a ninth-century inventor from Cordoba, Abbas ibn Firnas,
"the first person to have actually tried" to fly. But that notion is based
on a source that relied on ibn Firnas's mention in a ninth-century poem. It
also ignores the historian Joseph Needham's description of Chinese
attempts<http://books.google.com/books?id=PehoSnJfstUC&lpg=PA285&ots=Tp33llNKWH&dq=Yuan%20Huangtou%2C%20in%20559&pg=PA285#v=onepage&q=Yuan%20Huangtou%20%20559&f=false>as
early as the first century. The model of the flying machine is pure
speculation.

And some claims are simply incorrect: catgut was used in surgical sutures by
Galen<http://books.google.com/books?id=VgzI_gZ-7hcC&lpg=PA93&dq=Galen%20and%20catgut&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q=Galen%20and%20catgut&f=false>in
the second century, long before al-Zahrawi (named here as its
pioneer).

The exhibition also dutifully praises the multicultural aspect of this
Golden Age while actually undercutting it. Major cultures of the first
millennium (China, India,
Byzantium)<http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300086164>are
mentioned only to affirm the weightier significance of Muslim
contributions. And though we read that people "of many faiths worked
together" in the Golden Age, we don't learn much about them.

Religious affiliation actually seems far more important here than is
acknowledged, keeping some figures out and ushering others in. Christian
Arab contributions go unheralded, but the 15th-century Chinese explorer Zheng
He, <http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0507/feature2/map.html> a Muslim,
is celebrated though he has no deep connection to Golden Age cultures.

And finally we never learn much about the role of Islam itself.
Universities, we read, were affiliated with mosques. Did that affect
scientific inquiry or the status of non-Muslim scientists? Did the religious
regime have any impact on the ultimate failure of the transmission and
expansion of scientific
knowledge<http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item1150297/The%20Rise%20of%20Early%20Modern%20Science/?site_locale=en_US>?
And given the high cost of any golden age, isn't it necessary to give some
account of this civilization's extensive slave trade?

Instead of expanding the perspective, the exhibition reduces it to
caricature, showing Muslim culture rising out of a shadowy past to attain
glories later misappropriated by Western epigones. Left unexplored too is
how this tradition ended, leading to a long eclipse of science in Muslim
lands. There is only a recurring hint of injustices done.

The paradox is that this narrative is not only questionable but also
unnecessary. An exhibition about scientific achievements during the Abbasid
Caliphate could be remarkable if approached with curatorial perspective. Why
then, the indulgence here?

Perhaps because one tendency in the West, particularly after 9/11, has been
to answer Muslim accusations of injustice (and even real attacks) with an
exaggerated declaration of regard. It is guiltily offered as if in
embarrassed compensation, inspired by a desire not to appear to tar Islam
with the fervent claims made by its most violent adherents.

Science museums have shared that impulse. An Imax film at the Boston Museum
of Science <http://www.mos.org/exhibits_shows/imax&d=3892> is almost a
commercial travelogue about science's future in Saudi Arabia; and the
Liberty Science Center in New Jersey has presented a traveling exhibition
about Muslim inventions, that, like this one, mixed fascinating information
with promotional overstatement.

What is peculiar too is that the current Hall of Science show presumes a
long neglect of Muslim innovations, but try finding anything comparable
about Western discoveries for American students. Where is a systematic
historical survey of the West's great ideas and inventions in contemporary
science museums, many of which now seem to have very different
preoccupations?

In the meantime, in the interest of mutual understanding, some such show
about Western science might perhaps be mounted in Riyadh or Tehran, just as
this one was in London. Wouldn't that be a tale worthy of Scheherazade? It
might begin: "Take a look, if you dare."

"1001 Inventions" is on view through April 24 at the New York Hall of
Science, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens; nysci.org.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/arts/design/10museum.html?tntemail1=y&emc=tnt&pagewanted=all

--
Sesungguhnya, hanya dengan mengingat Allah, hati akan tenang.
now surely by Allah's remembrance are the hearts set at rest.
N'est-ce point par l'évocation d'Allah que se tranquillisent les coeurs.
im Gedenken Allahs ist's, daß Herzen Trost finden können.
>> al-Ra'd [13]: 28

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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