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Entry: Inventing Islam Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/inventing_islam#15474 Post contents: Some serious confusion of memes here- The current subsidy of the 1001 gadgets/ nights roadshow by wannabee technocrats in the UAE is indeed reminiscent of a Soviet All Technology Invented Here By Proleterians museum, but that is not to say Mendeleev didn't devise the Periodic Chart. The Frankish spectacles- likely a Venetian production in that century, represent two generations of technology transfer- Levantine glassmaking from its Syrian locus classicus to the Adriatic,and the elaboration of Helenistic optics ( remember the burning glass in Aristophanes' play? ) by Islamic savants like al Hazen and al-Kindi who had Theophrastus and Hero of Alexandria in their libraries in Arabic or Farsi centuries before the Greek originals found their way out of Byzantium and into Latin. The salient fact is that Islam's technology edge rusted away along with its grasp of experiment as an aid to proto-scientific thought ossified along with exegetic flexibility as al- falsafa was suppressed as a pagan distraction from dogmatic theology. As to the fella with Black Athena in his bonnet, reading a half dozen volumes of Needham's Science And Civilization In China may (one can dream) persuade him that our lot were playing catch up from Charlemagne to the Tudors. The proverbial Orient may not have kick started science , but it was in comparative terms a technology driven economic powerhouse on the eve of the Crusades. Sent at: 2008 11 21