Part one of a hopefully ongoing series.
Some may say that religion has made very little positive contribution to society.
The great logician/mathematician/Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell claims religion’s contributions were to fix the calendar, and predict eclipses, “These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.”
I suspect that Richard Dawkins feels something similar.
Well, keeping in mind that I’m not a historian, I will have to respectfully disagree.
In this week’s Nature, Yasmin Khan, of the Science Museum in London, does a review of:
Medieval Islamic Medicineby Peter Pormann and & Emilie Savage-Smith.
Sounds like a very interesting book, someone remind me to read it someday.
Khan writes: “We are given a sense of how Muslims perceived the body as well as the soul as precious, because it was derived from and accountable to God as the creator. The body therefore required constant and dutiful care, and had the right to be maintained and preserved and protected from abuse, meaning that the individual was bound to seek a cure for any ills. These sensibilities were influenced by precursor civilizations — particularly ancient Greece — and reinforced by the Islamic faith.”
“The medieval period when the Islamic world drove medical development and discovery is an indication that Islam itself is not inimical to progress.”
So, it appears that Islam has made positive contributions to society. Or maybe the review completely misinterpreted the book, or maybe the authors of the book are completely wrong.
the authors:
Emilie Savage-Smith, Professor of the History of Islamic Science, University of Oxford
Peter E Pormann, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick…oooh…he has a Medieval Islamic Medicine pod cast. Maybe I should try out the pod cast thing, now that it is blasé.
Posted by joncim at August 24, 2007 07:58 PM