The Islamic Golden Age was a period of massiveadvancements and exchanges of scientific discovery in

the middle ages. In the previous episode of this series, wediscussed the factors which led to this
explosion on nearly every intellectual front, and weexplored the worlds of theology and philosophy
which shaped it. Now, let's delve into how this community ofthinkers contributed to the development of
our understanding of science. Shoutout to MagellanTV for sponsoring thisvideo! If you are a history fan
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month membership trial! Thanks to Magellan for supporting our channel! The process for theorising,
testing, and analyzingthrough experimentation is known as the scientific method. For thousands of
years, ways to systematicallytest phenomena to understand them have led to scientific breakthroughs.
Discussions of Scientific methodology haveroots back to ancient Egypt and Babylon, but also
independently emerged in ancient India,among both Hindu and Buddhist philosophers. Likewise,
scientific methods were a majorsubject among ancient Greek philosophers and physicians. Most
important would be Aristotle, who developedmethods of both deductive and inductive reasoning, and
the often underappreciated Democritus,who wrote extensively of the existence of atoms, an object of
matter which could notbe broken down further, breaking reality into its constituent parts. This was all
theory, however, and in the Islamicworld, theory met with testing to develop the earliest experimental
methods. Here, the idea of running experiments andusing measurement to test different hypotheses
came into its own. Many of the great thinkers of the IslamicGolden age were polymaths and generalists,
so many names will appear again and againas they worked in different areas of study. One great
developer of experimental methodsis one of the great minds of the age, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham. al-
Haytham was born in what would be modern-dayIraq, and did much of his work serving as vizier, or
political advisor, to the BuyidEmirate. Using logical reasoning combined with empiricalexperimentation,
he disagreed with many Greek philosophers on the nature of light and vision,which we will discuss later.
al-Haytham saw himself on a quest for truthabove all else, noting that it is difficult to find and a hard
path to make the journey. He practised a process of relentless scepticismand finding the truth through
observation. This thinking is an early form of positivism,or the theory that knowledge about natural
phenomena can only be derived through observationand reason. Furthermore, al-Haytham's writings
indicatea form of using the principle of Occam's Razor, or choosing the option with the fewest numberof
assumptions when selecting between different explanations for phenomena. He often pointed out
frustration with thelack of development of such thought in ancient Greek texts. What al-Haytham did
through this work introducesthe idea of induction to scientific methods. As opposed to deductive
reasoning, where oneremoves possible explanations for phenomena until only one remains, induction
builds acollection of evidence and uses reason to find a theory which is the best explanationgiven what's
at hand. This thinking is the philosophy behind modernscience. Another developer of the scientific
methodin this age was the Persian scientist Abu Rayhan al-Biruni. He took an even greater interest in
systematicexperimentation to find natural principles. al-Biruni made much emphasis on the
repeatabilityof experiments, a cornerstone of the modern scientific method. He showed concern with
making sure to preventbias in observation, and so often repeated experiments many times. al-Biruni
desired to make averages of outcomesto compensate for the errors inherent with tools and the humans
who used them. These advances would find the basis of scientificdevelopment throughout the middle
ages, and the scientific method would not go throughfurther development until well into the 12th
century, a hundred years later. Islamic Scholars also made marked developmentsin the area of
mathematics. In many cases, they built upon scholars fromaround the world to cross-pollinate some of
the most foundational parts of our understandingof numbers. We can start with the numbers
themselves. The current system we have for the writingof numbers goes by the colloquial term Arabic
numerals for a reason. The Arabic numeral system is an excellentexample of the factors which made the
Islamic Golden age so impressive. The number system has its origins with Hindumathematicians in India
in the 8th century, including the concept of a number zero. From India, it came to the court in
Baghdad,where it attracted the attention of the brilliant working mathematicians in the bustling city.
Most importantly, it came to the attentionof Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-
Khwārizmī. In 820 he published On the Calculation withHindu Numerals, advocating for the mass
adoption of a base-ten numerical system which madedoing mathematics work much more manageable.
The book would be copied and translated acrossEurasia and North Africa. Its Latin translation was
Algoritmi de numeroIndorum. This latinization of al-Khwārizmī's namewould eventually serve as the
origin of the term algorithm. Within a hundred years, Islamic scholars tookthis contribution, spread it,
and began developing new and ingenious uses for these numerals,including the first case of using
decimals to record fractions. This powerful new way of symbolising numberswas not the only
contribution of scholars of the Islamic Golden age to mathematics. One focus of Islamic mathematicians
was thedevelopment of modern-day algebra. The word algebra comes from an Arabic termfor reuniting
broken parts. al-Khwārizmī was also a major scholar who,along with the Greek mathematician
Diophantus, have the title of the father of algebra. Much of his work concerned techniques to
reducepolynomial equations. A different mathematician, Omar Khayyam, builtupon al-Khwārizmī's work
to develop the world of cubic equations. A different Egyptian mathematician Abū Kāmil,Shujāʿ ibn Aslam
ibn Muḥammad Ibn Shujāʿ would expand on al-Khwārizmī's work intoan exploration of negative
numbers and their notation. Outside of algebra, mathematicians duringthis period also made significant
developments in areas such as induction, the working withand notation of irrational numbers, and the
spherical law of sines. This work would then translate to massivedevelopments during the Islamic
Golden Age in the scientific realm of physics. Before Newton's laws of motion, Islamic
physicistsdeveloped concepts of acceleration, reaction, and impetus. Many were early developments of
what wouldeventually become Newton's laws of motions and Newtonian physics in general. But where
physics developed in the goldenage was the area of optics, or the study of the properties of light.
Development of laws of refraction and reflectionbegan under the Baghdad physicist Abū Saʿd al-ʿAlāʾ ibn
Sahl. He wrote an influential treatise investigatinghow curved mirrors bend and focus light, developing
the first law of refraction, and inventinganaclastic lenses, a critical early invention in the development of
eyeglasses, and eventuallythe camera. Then optics would change entirely once al-Haythambegan to
work in the field. The same al-Haytham who pioneered the scientificmethod also often receives the title
of the father of optics, and not for no reason. He began his work analysing the work the Greekshad done
on reflection. In his famous book on optics, he publishedsignificant disagreement with the likes of
Ptolemy and Euclid on the nature of vision. The Greeks firmly believed that eyesight workedmuch like
sonar or radar: that was light emitted from the eyes and reflected to give sight. al-Haytham disagreed,
and postulated correctlythat light reflects into the eyes, and could explain with lenses the physiology of
eyesight,in doing so developing the camera obscura. He also sought to understand the nature ofthe
movement of light like that of the movement of objects, noting that many of the laws ofmotion seem to
apply the same way. And the scientific development didn't stopthere. Another place of significant
growth was thefield of astronomy. Much effort went into developing astronomyas part of a project to
determine Qibla, the direction of the Ka'bah. In Muslim prayers, one is expected to performthem facing
Qibla, anywhere on earth. They also used astrology to determine whento perform important actions.
Developing these fields, polymaths like al-Khwārizmīalso published documentation of the movement of
the sun, moon, and planets. Centuries before Galileo, many Islamic astronomersexpressed doubts in the
prevailing Ptolemaic understanding of the cosmos, the idea whichplaces the earth as an immobile centre
of the universe. While none of them ever stumbled upon a heliocentricmodel, there was a definite
growing suspicion that Ptolemy's model of the universe did nothold up under observation and
mathematical modelling. Looking back down on Earth, Golden Age Islamicscholars made significant
advancements in geography, as well as a very dear subjectto Kings and Generals, cartography. The
Islamic age was full of Muslim explorers. They documented exploration ventures as fareast as China and
south as southern Africa. Maps were also integral for many aspects ofmaintaining such a massive
empire; for the everyday needs of outlining just which territorykings managed, as well as making troop
movement plans for generals. Because of this importance, geography andcartography were well-funded
priorities of the Abbasid Caliphs. To refine the mile, scholars wound up calculatingan impressively
accurate estimation of the circumference of the earth. The earlier developments in spherical
trigonometry,like the spherical law of sines, allowed for Islamic geographers to develop better andmore
accurate methods of map projection, and even the very early beginnings of the polarbased coordinate
method. Moving on to the realm of chemistry and materialscience, the Islamic Golden Age saw an
explosion in the understanding of chemistry and thenature of compounds. Those who worked with
materials in variousways were called alchemists. At this time, most of the ideas of the propertiesof
materials were a combination of four essential elements: fire, earth, air and water. Each was one
combination of hot and cold,and wet and dry. The fire was hot and dry, earth cold and dry,air hot and
moist, and water cold and moist. This concept of the material world is notmerely the basis of chemistry,
but of medicine. Before the discovery of germ theory, diseasewas thought to be one of these attributes
being out of balance within the body. The Persian alchemist Abū Mūsā Jābir ibnHayyān wished to build
on this. As just one part of a truly massive body ofwork touching on everything from alchemy, to
astrology, to philosophy, ibn Hayyān lookedto sort the earth's metals by the Aristotelian model. What he
theorised was that metals were fusionsof mercury and sulfur made deep within the earth. What was
most important, however, was thathe believed making different combinations of different materials, he
could produce afundamentally different metal. What seems like an implausible assertion todaywould
have significant impacts on the world of alchemy. Part of the goal of the profession was thequest to turn
substances into other substances, most famously lead into gold. ibn Hayyān's reasoning introduced the
ideathat a different metal, when mixed with something like lead, could produce gold. The search for this
metal was of significantimportance to western alchemists, gaining the nickname, ‘the philosopher's
stone’. This work was not a significant contributionto our modern understanding of chemistry. It comes
from a prescientific time, and alchemists,like many in the physical sciences, relied on only the theories
they had around to workwith, and their methods of observing and testing experiments when they could.
In the endeavour to discover the propertiesof these materials, while drawing the wrong conclusions
they however came up with variouschemicals and inventions. We will discuss those more at length in
afuture video in this series. In working with these materials, Islamic scholarsseem to have developed
distillation, evaporation, and sublimation. Our last stop on this tour of Islamic contributionsto the
sciences in this period is biology. In areas such as agriculture, the Arabs leda revolution in the sciences of
cultivating crops and livestock. What the age managed to do very well is takestaple Mediterranean crops
such as olives and dates, and make information about bestpractices available to a vast body of people.
Agronomists like ibn Bassal of Toledo travelledacross the Islamic world, learning and studying how
farmers practiced their work in differentlands. He documented nearly 200 species of cropsand wrote
practical guides on the proper care of them. In many ways, this period birthed the ideaof the academic
study of agriculture. It began a dialogue between farmers and agriculturalscholars, which would not only
vastly improve the quality of farm goods, but prompt a searchfor new farmable plants and agrarian
experimentation. Archaeologists can measure the improvementof food production, and thus population
figures, from these advancements. They can see evidence for the revolution inareas such as studying the
size of sheep bones to see their growth, indicating improvementsin animal husbandry. Likewise,
irrigation improved with the introductionof various ways of pumping water into fields using animals, the
wind, or even water itself. In places with ancient roman aqueducts, suchas the Andalusian city of
Cordoba, they were repaired and brought back into use, even expanded. Further study of animals came
from translationsof Aristotle's zoology. Islamic zoologists used this famous translationas they
categorised various animals and catalogued animal parts—one of which is the most important,the
human body. Next time, we're going to focus on the developmentof the understanding and treatment of
the human body during the Islamic Golden Age,so make sure you are subscribed to our channel and
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