Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives

Islam & Science, Summer, 2004 by Muzaffar Iqbal

The last chapter of the book is by Tzvi Langermann who teaches Arabic at Bar Ilan University. Langermann's title, which deliberately seeks to establish connections with an earlier work by A. I. Sabra, (23) has a meaningful question mark: "Another Andalusian Revolt? Ibn Rushd's Critique of al-Kindi's Pharmacological Computus". The question mark in the title is indicative of the open-ended attitude of the author toward a significant question which some historians have raised and which he briefly mentions: can certain Andalusian trends in science, medicine, philosophy, Islamic Law, and Arabic grammar be interpreted as manifestations of a general revisionist attitude toward the established authorities in those fields in the Eastern part of the Muslim world? Langermann refrains from committing himself to any conclusive response, but his article provides many new insights to Ibn Rushd's vehement attack on al-Kindi's proposal of a non-Galenic computus for calculating the right quantities of simple drugs in order to produce the desired degree of their compounded elemental qualities: heat, cold, dry, and moist. But the importance of Langermann's article is enhanced by the fact that its wider context deals with the general intellectual trends in the Islamic West and their relationship with the Eastern tradition.

All chapters have their own bibliographies, and a comprehensive index is included at the end of the book. This volume deserves full attention of the scholars in the field, but it is general enough for an average reader interested in the Islamic scientific tradition. If one can imagine a comprehensive history of the enterprise of science in the Islamic civilization--which is still decades away--as a project like the construction of a vast palace, this book provides several useful windows, looking into one of its numerous gardens; one only wishes there were more such works to expedite this monumental task, which will also add significantly to our understanding of Islamic civilization as a whole.

(1.) Goldziher, Ignaz, "Stellung der alten islamischen Orthodoxie zu den antiken Wissenschaften," first published as no. 18 (1915) of Abhandlungen der Koniglisch Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophische-historische Klasse) (Berlin, 1916), pp. 3-466, translated by M. L. Swartz in his (ed., 1981) Studies on Islam (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 185-215; [hereafter Goldziher (1916)].

(2.) Goldziher (1916), p. 185.

(3.) Ibid, pp. 185-6.

(4.) This apt term was first used by Sabra in his 1987 paper, "The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement", History of Science, 25, London: Science History Publications Ltd. 1987, pp. 223-43, reprinted in A. I. Sabra, Optics, Astronomy and Logic: Studies in Arabic Science and Philosophy (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994); the reprint retains the original pagination.

(5.) Ibid, p. 229.

(6.) See, for example, the 1993 book by sociologist Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) which is permeated with "Goldziherism". Huff is by no means the only contemporary scholar who relies on this approach to "prove" that the Islamic scientific tradition existed and survived not because of Islam but in spite of it. Similar formulations exist in numerous histories of science. As an example, see, David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992).