Origin of Science and the Crusade

 

     Science and technology was, is and will be a lethal tool to rule the world. Science has been the key to the power. The nation which owns the latest technology can rule the world, it is proved from the Cavalry archer of Genghis Khan to the modern day nuclear war head.  But when we look at the history of the world Egyptian, Greeks, Roman, Persian, Mongolian, Saracen, British, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and many others had been the super power in different periods of the history.
Yet when we talk anybody about a scientific inventions and discoveries or major leap in the scientific development most tent to point their fingers towards the Europe if it is before 18^th century and towards the USA if it is after 19^th century. This sort of behavior is deep down in our minds. But is this correct? If so, why the non-European nations were super power? For this I think we have to take a journey in the history of Science from the early Egyptians. In this short article I would like to take an excursion about the origins of science, where there the history had been littered with many manipulation and misconception.

     According to many in the world the science was begun by Greeks and was developed by the post renaissance Europe. As the same time all the great cultures like Persian, Egyptian, Chinese and Indian had no clue regarding the science. But when we look at the history of these civilizations we can understand how developed they were in the history.

Egyptians were one of the early races before Greeks who were developed in the Science. They were well versed in anatomy (for art), astronomy and astrology, which were inseparably linked in ancient Egypt, biology and veterinary medicine, chemistry, geography, geology, history, law, linguistics, mathematics, geometry, medicine, mineralogy, pedagogy(education), philosophy, physics, sociology and theology [1]. Irrigation scheme of Nile, tall standing pyramids and the mummies are some example of scientific feat of the Egyptians.  Geometry was applied in the Egypt for tax purposes before the so called Euclid of Greece wrote the book of The Elements. Here comes another manipulation of History again in the form of Euclid. Many text books refer Euclid was a white male eventually from Greece and lived in Alexandria around three century B.C. But no such person was alive on this mother earth. The author of this book is a black woman from Alexandria who lived around fifth century C.E. [2]

     From these arguments we can assure that the Greek were not the first one to begin the Science. Now let’s consider the development of Science. If we consider the manipulated version of the science history, we get a wide blank span of time from the Greek civilization to the renaissance Europe. Where were the text and the sources of these scientific theorems and formulae? Were they buried in the Mount Olympus? No. They were translated taken into custody by another civilization which have contributed to the many of the scientific development and not credited to it. Yes it was taken into the custody by Islamic Civilization. They hold these texts of Greek until the crusades [2]. The west claims that the Muslim merely translated the works of Greek and preserved it. They never did develop the ideas in the text. This argument is absurd. The Muslims practically ruled from the shore Atlantic Ocean to the boarders of China. And they just preserved these texts which cost a fortune with the papyrus technology. Many books from Baghdad Library were destroyed by the invasion of Mongols over Khwarezmia on 13^th century C.E. But the contributions of Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna) - whose “The Book of Healing” was text book for medicine in many medieval universities[3], Alhazen Ibn al Haitham, Jabir ibn Hayyas, Al Farabi, Muhammed bin Zakariyya al Razi, Ibn al-Nafis were inevitable in the scientific history. Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari was an Islamic scholar, physician and psychologist of Zoroastrian descent, who produced one of the first encyclopaedia of medicine. Even the number system we used today was introduced to the word by Arabs, which replaced the primitive Roman and Greek number systems

     Let’s have brief a look on the other civilizations which contributed to the science. Like the crest on the peacock’s head, like the gem in the cobra’s hood, so stands mathematics 
at the head of all the sciences. Vedic literature of Indian Culture is replete with concepts of zero, the techniques of algebra and algorithm, square root and cube root. Arguably, the origins of Calculus lie in India 300 years before Leibnitz and Newton. Algebraic theories was developed by Aryapatta who lived in 5^th century C.E. and another mathematician Bhaskaracharya was the first to was the first to conceive of differential calculus in 12^th century. Most of us are familiar with Roman numerals. Think you are sitting in a class doing Calculus using Roman numerals. You are going to write 1788 in Roman numerals it will be MDCCLXXXVIII. You even can’t think of doing calculus by using this number system. From this we can conclude that calculus was not developed or used in early Europe.

Ancient India's development in chemistry was also in a higher level and used in a variety of practical activities. In any early civilization, metallurgy has remained an activity central to all civilizations from the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, to all other civilizations that followed Indian achieved the higher  level of metallurgy. By the side of Qutub Minar in New Delhi, there is an iron pillar erected during Arya Gupta period around 500 AD. This pillar is 7.32 meters tall, and has a circumference of 40 cm in the bottom and 30 cm at the top. It has been standing in the open for last 1500 years, withstanding the wind, heat and weather, but still has not rusted, except minor natural erosion. This kind of rust proof iron (steel) was discovered very few decades before by mixing carbon with iron [4].

     In addition, the Chinese Dynasty in the Far East was producing gunpowder, paper and establishing printing presses. Moreover, the Calendar system was introduced by Mayan civilization that is very famous for predicting apocalypse of the earth. 

     From the above arguments, one can conclude that science was not only originated from Greece and it originated universally. Then how did the story “Science was originated in Greece” came into play? Moreover, where was it originated? These questions can be answered in two simple words “Church” and “Power”. From the time when the state and the church merge, Church initiated the program of distorting history to promote its power. This technology of falsehood was now applied to “manage” common perceptions[5]. During the crusades, church captured many text and tent to use them. But theological aspects would not allow them to use a Muslim knowledge. Therefore, they manipulated their people by saying that the knowledge Arab had was belonged to Greeks. Arabs just preserved it. This story enabled the universities in Europe to use translated Arabic books without contradicting their theology. But on the Arabs side, it was a different story. They built Bayt al Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad; they gathered knowledge from all over the world, including India, Persia and China. They certainly did not restrict themselves to Greek sources [5]. But the church spread the word that the knowledge acquired from the Arabs only had sources to Greeks. So all the knowledge which was acquired from Bayt al Hikma in Baghdad became the Greek’s, So did all the scientific inventions and discoveries.

 This theory is being promoted by many scholars of the present too. Here is an example from Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy 

“. .as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation.” [6].

     So anyone from any country has the right to say that their ancestors were also one of the pioneers of the science. It is time stand up against the “West only theory”. The Europeans not only colonized our countries but also our education system. They left our countries long ago. Now it is time to decolonize our education system. And the way we think.

References

[1]Dunn,J. Ancient Egyptian Science retrieved from http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/science1.html

[2] Raju, C. K. Euclid and Jesus. Multiversity.

[3] http://www.ibnsinaacademy.org/

[4] Science, Medicine, Technology in Ancient India retrieved from http://www.crystalinks.com/indiascience.html

[5] Raju,  C.K. Is science western in origin?. Multiversity.

[6] Percy, W. Lost in the Cosmos retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html

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