Monday, June 8, 2009

Islam's influence

My blogging may be spotty for the next few weeks, as I'll be traveling to the States because of a family emergency. In the meantime, here's an essay by physicist Frank Tipler arguing that Islam's contributions to science, mathematics, etc. have been greatly exaggerated:

If one reads history of science textbooks prior to about 1980, one will find very little mention of Muslim “contributions” to physics and astronomy. This is reasonable, because there weren’t any. In the past generation, however, political correctness has dictated that Muslims be given credit for discoveries they did not make.
...
During the Cold War, it was commonplace for leftist academics to attribute many discoveries to scientists in Communist countries, discoveries that had actually been made in the West. So now leftist academics attribute to Muslims discoveries that had actually been made by others.

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

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