Most people are
unaware that most of the modern technology and scientific inventions have their
root in the non-Western civilizations. Islamic civilization both preserved and
expanded Greek philosophical and scientific knowledge when such information was
almost entirely forgotten in the West or rather neglected by the church. The
numeral system which is used in the West also burrowed from the Arab, who
included zero from the Indians. Islamic mathematicians were able to develop an
arithmetic based on the decimal system and to make refinements in algebra
(itself an Arabic word).
