
Johannes Kepler was not a lone genius - Hooke
https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/a-misleading-book-title-that-creates-the-wrong-impression/
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lemmy
I highly recommend Arthur Koestler's 'Sleepwalkers'. It's a detailed history
of Copernicus, Brahe and in particular Kepler, but is also about how new
models of knowledge gain traction. So it goes way beyond simplistic 'lone
genius' analyses but still celebrates the great achievements of individuals. A
wonderful read.

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johnchristopher
Indeed, it's a nice read.

I would like to add it also features a nice introduction to greek astronomy.

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abecedarius
_The Discovery of Dynamics_ by Julian Barbour explains Kepler's work on Mars
with enough technical detail and historical context that it made me think:
holy crap, Kepler _was_ a genius, or very lucky in some of his inspirations,
like the guess that led to the equal-area law (it was meant at first to be an
easier-to-compute approximation to another idea); along with the mathematical
talent he worked really hard and earned that luck; and nobody else seemed to
be thinking about the problems in the same way leading to Kepler's laws. I'd
guess they'd have taken decades more without him, and appeared in stages.

Of course his work was not done in a vacuum.

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Cyph0n
As usual with these kinds of books, there is no mention of the work done by
Muslim astronomers hundreds of years before either Copernicus or Kepler. Do
you actually think these two astronomers and other scientists just came up
with their results? That's not how science works.

Unfortunately many Western historians casually ignore or at best minimize the
impact the Islamic scientific movement had on many fields such as philosophy,
mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Instead they jump from the
Greeks to the pre-Renaissance era. "If Europe was in a state of academic
decline, so was everyone else". As the saying goes, the winner gets to rewrite
history.

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smarinov
Do you have any evidence that all the Middle Eastern scholars from the Middle
Ages (no pun intended) have been practising Muslims? Did they work in complete
isolation from Europe? How so?

Also, what exactly do you mean by „the winner” in this case? Do you imply that
the Middle East has lost something particular _due to external forces_ and
hasn't been developing up to its potential? If so, what is that and what were
those external forces? Did they come from Europe? How so? Even Eastern Europe?
Even the parts of it that were forcefully joined to a Middle Eastern fiercely
expansionist country like the Ottoman empire? How so?

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Cyph0n
1\. Yes, quite a few of them were regarded as scholars in Islam. Some have
seminal works on different aspects of Islamic science. During a certain
period, memorizing the Quran and learning the essentials of Islamic science
was a prerequisite to further pursuing study in the natural sciences. Keep in
mind that this is not the rule, and depends on the specific time period,
region, and "flavor" of Islam the scientist followed.

2\. Just after the decline in power of the Ottoman Empire (around 1500 AD or
so), Europe began to flourish. The Ottomans were not able to keep up, and were
overpowered both in military might and scientific advancement. This worsened
with the expansionary period in Europe (1600s-1700s), and reached its peak
with the colonial period.

The colonization of the entire Arab World and the fall of the Ottoman Empire
together were just too much - Muslims were lost. Unfortunately, they put the
blame on Islam while the blame was simply on lack of unity, general decadence
of the ruling elite, and pursuit of material gain rather than scientific
advancement. In addition, the colonial powers themselves made sure their
subjects didn't get much done. Even after they left, the effects remained for
quite some time. So scientific development was put on the side, and that's
where we are now.

As an example, in 2013, South Korea (pop. 50 million) was granted 120,000
patents. The entire Arab World (360 million) was granted only 7,000. We are
just too far behind.

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smarinov
Someone else already addressed your second point, so I will give my two cents
on the first one.

I am perfectly aware of all this and I don't want to underestimate the
importance of Islam in the Middle Ages. This was basically school education
before we had our modern systems in place. In Europe all universities were
innately Christian, in Western Asia and Northern Africa all madrassas were
equally so Muslim in nature, so deep knowledge of the respective holy
scriptures was of utmost importance there.

However, we live in a globalised world nowadays and religion, save for
religious studies, has no place in science. You may need to work with
Christians, Jews, Muslims from the other side of the Sunni-Shi'a split,
Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, agnostics, or even outright atheists. All of them
may be great specialists in their fields and you shouldn't dismiss potential
collaboration with any based on prejudice. If you are a true believer, you
should know that we are no ones to judge others since the power for this lies
solely in the hands of God. If you are not, this is irrelevant for you
altogether - just try to live a decent life and improve your community through
hard work.

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Cyph0n
I am fully aware of that. The guy asked a question about a specific time
period, and I tried to answer it.

Islam is not at all like Christianity when it comes to science. That's why
Muslims were way ahead at their peak. For example, most philosophical works
produced my Muslim scholars were based on that of the ancient Greeks, who were
polytheists.

Do you actually think it would make sense to reject someone else's work or not
work with people because of a difference of belief?

