Reading most of the technology articles would have you to believe that dark ages really existed and for more than thousands years, i.e from Greece to Renaissance time there is no marine technology advancement between them.
The truth of the matter is that the Arabic and muslim are the master of the sea during this so called "dark ages" time, and many advancement has been made from navigation gear of the Arabic astrolobe to the Idrisi map.
In tide prediction Al-Kindi for example, has notable work on tides in his seminal book Treatise on the Efficient Cause of the Flow and Ebb back in 9th CE [1],[2].
> In a treatise entitled as Risala fi l-Illa al-Failali l-Madd wa l-Fazr (Treatise on the Efficient Cause of the Flow and Ebb), al-Kindi presents a theory on tides which "depends on the changes which take place in bodies owing to the rise and fall of temperature."
Thanks for pointing that out but there's must some mistakes on the website. Al-Kindi contribution is on the experiment in showing that tides are caused by the expansion of water due to heat but of course later people know that it mainly due to gravity.
Other well known Arabic and muslim reseachers in the middle ages working on ocean tides are Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (Albumasar), Al-Biruni and Nur ad-Din al-Bitruji (Alpetragius).
Albumasar in his seminal book on tides was the first hypothesized the lunar correlation [1]. He's arguably the most important figure in the history of tidal theory between the ancient Greeks and Renaissance. His famous work namely The Great Introduction to Astrology (Kitab al-Madkhal al-Kabir) was translated into Latin in the 12th century and became the standard reference for European scholars (like Roger Bacon and Albert the Great) when they tried to understand tidal physics.
Al-Biruni was a polymath who had direct experience with the strong tides of the Indian Ocean specifically at the port of Somnath in Gujarat, India. Of the 146 books written by him, 95 are devoted to astronomy, mathematics, and related subjects like mathematical geography [2]. In his encyclopedic work Indica (Kitab al-Hind), he discussed how the moon influences "moist substances". He dismissed the common myth in the region that viewed tides as the breathing of the earth or sea monsters. He firmly established the moon as the physical cause of the tidal cycle. This observation was using data gathered from sailors and his own measurements of the shoreline.
Al-Bitruji was the very first astronomer who proposed an alternative to Ptolemy's model of the universe long before (more than 300 years) Galileo, by avoiding both epicycles and eccentrics mechanism [3]. According to him, the movement of the celestial spheres created a physical dragging force that stirred the waters of the earth, but his theory is less accurate than Albumasar's.
Ocean tides was a significant area of study for Arab and Muslim reseachers during the middle ages (Islamic Golden Age), had extensive access to the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, where tides are far more dramatic. The Greeks and Romans however, had a very limited exposure to ocean tides since they mostly observing the tide-less Mediterranean sea.
> Thanks for pointing that out but there's must some mistakes on the website.
You were the one who suggested that web site.
> Al-Kindi contribution is on the experiment in showing that tides are caused by the expansion of water due to heat but of course later people know that it mainly due to gravity.
Where is the mistake? That is what I quoted.
Your original premise is "Reading most of the technology articles would have you to believe that dark ages really existed and for more than thousands years".
That is, IMO, quite an exaggeration. In the European context, the "Dark Ages" is a dated and inaccurate term for the early middle ages, so the period of about 500 years after the fall of Rome - far from even a single thousand years that you wrote, which would exclude the Carolingian Renaissance.
The term also contains both anti-Catholic and anti-religion attitudes, by Protestant and Enlightenment thinkers who regarded the Roman Church and religion in general as the oppressors of intellectual thought.
I therefore can't help but think you are listening to some very misinformed writers, which is probably why they are writing about technology and not history.
Like, you wrote "Romans however, had a very limited exposure to ocean tides since they mostly observing the tide-less Mediterranean sea" but the Romans had access to the Atlantic coastline from Gibraltar up to modern day Netherlands, plus the modern English coastline .. and those have tides. Famously so, given Julius Caesar's problems with tides during his invasions of Britain.
For that matter, the Roman Empire also reached the Red Sea, with maritime routes to India all the way to the Ganges. Hardly "limited"!
You wrote "Albumasar in his seminal book on tides was the first hypothesized the lunar correlation" but that correlation was made well before. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_tides#History "An ancient Indian Purana text dated to 400-300 BC refers to the ocean rising and falling because of heat expansion from the light of the Moon." (sounds familiar, yes?), and "Ultimately the link between the Moon (and Sun) and the tides became known to the Greeks, although the exact date of discovery is unclear; references to it are made in sources such as Pytheas of Massilia in 325 BC and Pliny the Elder's Natural History in 77 AD."
Your [1] even says he rejected "rejected Greek thought that moonlight influenced the tides and considered that the Moon had some astrological virtue that attracted the sea." How do you conclude his book was the first to hypothesize the lunar correlation?
You also wrote "Al-Bitruji was the very first astronomer who proposed an alternative to Ptolemy's model of the universe" but that is also not true. The very same paragraph on that Wikipedia page points out "Seleucus of Seleucia is thought to have theorized around 150 BC that tides were caused by the Moon as part of his heliocentric model." and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentrism adds "a moving Earth was proposed at least from the 4th century BC in Pythagoreanism, and a fully developed heliocentric model was developed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC."
What your [3] says is that he was first "to present the concentric spheres model", it points out how it "was a modification of the system of planetary motion proposed by his predecessors, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and Ibn Tufail (Abubacer). He was unsuccessful in replacing Ptolemy's planetary model, as the numerical predictions of the planetary positions in his configuration were less accurate than those of the Ptolemaic model" . It links to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_spheres which points out that model dates back to the Ancient Greeks.
These far predate the start of Islam, much less the Islamic Golden Age.
The Islamic Golden Age was a fantastic era of scholarship, architecture, and research. Making incorrect claims of primacy tarnishes that glory.
My point is that the article is devoid of the significant contributions made in the so called dark ages as so many technical and technology articles with historical background posted in HN [1].
>What your [3] says is that he was first "to present the concentric spheres model", it points out how it "was a modification of the system of planetary motion proposed by his predecessors, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and Ibn Tufail (Abubacer). He was unsuccessful in replacing Ptolemy's planetary model, as the numerical predictions of the planetary positions in his configuration were less accurate than those of the Ptolemaic model" .
Imagine if in the future scholars were dismissing Newton's novel contributions to astronomy because his physics model is not that accurate compared to Einstein's. Or even more ridiculous if their future articles point to Ptolemy and straight to Einstein skipping Newton.
>Making incorrect claims of primacy tarnishes that glory.
We can debate about the accuracy later but your comments were missing the forest for the trees, of western biased scholars making their scientist/engineers/technologist contributions even more significant or using your own word "more primacy". The idea is that they (Renaissance scholars) came up with the so called novel and great ideas (pardon the pun) that were originated from the Greek very simple elementary ideas and jump straight into Renaisance era sophisticated ideas, and conveniently skipping the true lineage of knowledge and scholarship in between them.
In research and scholarship this mentallity is frowned upon and illegal. The proper name of this immoral activities is plagiarism by not mentioning the prior reseachers who are you doing the same work and proposing valid ideas even if their work is less accurate than yours [2]:
"Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work."
[1] The Myth of the ‘Dark Ages’ Ignores How Classical Traditions Flourished Around the World [1]:
Don't use the term "Dark Ages". The article does not. Use "early European medieval period". Repeating it perpetuates the myth. If you must use it, say "European Dark Ages", and be aware that you are still perpetrating a false anti-religion narrative.
> if in the future scholars were dismissing Newton's novel contributions to astronomy because his physics model is not that accurate compared to Einstein's.
Newton's came first. Einstein improved on Newton.
The example you point to came after the Ptolemaic system and made worse predictions. Plus, there are no compounding rotations of homocentric spheres. And there were other heliocentric models.
> of western biased scholars making their scientist/engineers/technologist contributions even more significant
Sure. And you didn't mention ancient Indian contributions to tides either, like the one I quoted from Wikipedia.
"In earlier versions of this narrative, its European propagators claimed that the Islamic scholars who appropriated Greek knowledge in the eighth-century and then passed it back to their European successors, beginning in the twelfth-century, only conserved that knowledge, effectively doing nothing with it and not increasing it. ... a later generation of historians of science began to research the work of those Islamic scholars, reading, transcribing, translating and analysing their work and showing that they had in fact made substantial contributions to many areas of science and mathematics, contributions that had flowed into modern European science along with the earlier Greek, Babylonian and Egyptian contributions ... Unfortunately the hagiographic, amateur, wannabe pop historians of science now entered the field keen to atone for the sins of the earlier Eurocentric historical narrative and began to exaggerate the achievements of the Islamic scholars to show how superior they were to the puny Europeans who stole their ideas, like the colonial bullies who stole their lands."
You believe I am solidly in the first camp, and you in the second. I believe your comments strongly support my belief that you belong in the third category - a part of the forest you should be aware of because that comment was directed to you.
If I were in the first camp then it should be very easy to refute me by pointing to concrete examples, but your examples fall apart under simple scrutiny, often even by reading the references you give.
If your knowledge were deep, you never would have written "Romans however, had a very limited exposure to ocean tides" as if that were meaningful - or you would have explained why I was wrong, rather than ignoring the problem.
Even now, you write "In research and scholarship this mentallity is frowned upon and illegal."
Plagiarism is NOT illegal per se. Your own [1] says "Plagiarism and copyright infringement functionally overlap, depending on the copyright law protection in force, but they are not equivalent concepts,[19] and although many types of plagiarism may not meet the legal requirements in copyright law as adjudicated by courts, they still constitute the passing-off of another's work as one's own, and thus plagiarism. "
Nor is it always plagiarism to not mention the prior researchers who did the work before you. That's actually quite common, because 1) finding previous work can be hard, and 2) people don't like digging into the literature. If you don't know about previous work then that's called independent re-discovery, not plagiarism. Ramanujan rediscovered known theorems. He did not plagiarize them.
I'm not sure why you keep replying to my post since I believe you understand my original point that most of these historical article were jumping straight from old Greek to Renaissance era.
> Don't use the term "Dark Ages". The article does not. Use "early European medieval period". Repeating it perpetuates the myth. If you must use it, say "European Dark Ages", and be aware that you are still perpetrating a false anti-religion narrative.
The knowledge lineage need to to be taken into account, it's not my job to do that it's the author of the article responsibility, I just pointing the European and western biased here. The biased even more profound in the medical history literature whether they mentioned "dark ages" or not.
>Newton's came first. Einstein improved on Newton
Newton came earlier then Einstein improved on Newton, fixed that for you.
Before Newton there were many other Arabic and muslim scholars working on the physics of planetary problems, or even Indian and Chinese scholars, but I think you get my point.
> "Romans however, had a very limited exposure to ocean tides" as if that were meaningful - or you would have explained why I was wrong, rather than ignoring the problem.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
For example now we have western and European based wireless modulation and standards including Wi-Fi by IEEE and 5G by 3GPP that cannot work reliably with tropical region with lush trees, foliage and heavy rain (in certain spectrum). For satellite communication on certain popular wireless spectrum that means you don't get the signal most of the time during the day. Where in most European countries rain is exotic with minimum rain year around but in tropical countries there's frequent rain, and during rainy season like now it rain practically everyday.
Currently I'm working on the improvement of the wireless modulation that can work much better in this environment due to the western researchers do not experiencing much of this challenging and harsh propagation environment of the tropical trees/rain/etc. Thus they can sympathized but not empathized on the situation. There's no urgent need for them to improve on the situation unlike us although now we're in the Wi-Fi 7 going to 8, and 5G going to 6G for cellular.
However back to the article, the European scholars later found ocean tides is something that need to be calculated, analyzed and predicted due to their colonization effort around the world during the Renaissance time, hence the need to explore and research them further.
Because I want to encourage you to read your sources in more detail. Good scholarship is important, and yet so very hard. And because I want to know new things, and this exchange has lead to some fruitful readings for me.
> it's the author of the article responsibility
You haven't pointed out what's missing from the article that would be relevant to the reader. Rather, what you have pointed out hasn't been correct, or hasn't been relevant.
> working on the physics of planetary problems
Sure. Absolutely. And how would mentioning more of them improve the article? The tides are not caused by the heat of the moon. The tides are not caused by astrological forces. The tides are not caused by undersea monsters. The moon's orbit is not described by a sphere. Listing tidbits about all the people who worked on tides is far outside the scope of this article.
> the European scholars later found ocean tides is something that need to be calculated, analyzed and predicted due to their colonization effort around the world during the Renaissance time, hence the need to explore and research them further.
Sure. And they built on a long history of earlier research in understanding tides.
"Much has been said about the nature of waters ; but the most wonderful circumstance is the alternate flowing and ebbing of the tides, which exists, indeed, under various forms, but is caused by the sun and the moon. ... There is a difference in the tides, depending on the moon, of a complicated nature, and, first, as to the period of seven days. For the tides are of moderate height from the new moon to the first quarter ; from this time they increase, and are the highest at the full: they then decrease. On the seventh day they are equal to what they were at the first ... After an interval of eight years, and the hundredth revolution of the moon, the periods and the heights of the tides return into the same order as at first"
Not bad for someone from the Mediterranean .. except, wait! Not only would he have read about tides, he was the procurator of Hispania Tarraconensis, which has an Atlantic coastline, and may have been the procurator of Gallia Belgica, also on the Atlantic.
"The next advances were made in the Thang. Tou Shu-Mêng, about +770, who wrote the Hai Thao Chih (or Hai Chiao Chih) (On the Tides), seems to have been one of the first to deal with the lunar theory of the tides with any scientific detail. When the moon is passing through hsi-mu and ta-liang, he said, the water rises higher. ... In +850 came a short tractate which was to be famous, Lu Chao’s Hat Chhao Fu (Essay on the Tides). From this we know that regular tide tables (thao chih) were already in use, and that the association of neaps with the moon’s quarters was fully accepted."
Tides calculated, analyzed, and predicted long before Europe's greedy immoral ventures.
Needham suggests the necessity was even greater in China because "The coasts of China, however, have tides of considerable range, for example, about twelve feet in spring off the mouth of the Yangtze. Moreover, China possessed one of the only two great tidal bores or eagres in the world, that on the Chhien-Thang River near Hangchow".
If you really believe your necessity hypothesis, then you should stress Chinese tidal studies, not Muslim/Arabic ones.
Still, it's all interconnected. Europeans needed a better way to handle bookkeeping. Fibbonacci's Liber Abaci introduced the Indo–Arabic numeral system to Europe. The resulting improved of banking and accounting abilities would later help fund Europe's exploitative efforts.
China developed gunpowder. European researchers improved on it both for internal wars and their wars of subjugation.
The Needham Question - yes, the very same Needham - asks and tries to answer the question of why modern science did not develop in Chinese or Indian civilization (or during the Muslim Golden Age), but only in later Europe.
> Rather, what you have pointed out hasn't been correct, or hasn't been relevant.
According to your biased conjectures.
>Fibbonacci's Liber Abaci introduced the Indo–Arabic numeral system to Europe
Please don't further propagate this fake story, this is just another European biased narratives and lies.
Arab and muslim were in Europe well before Fibonacci, and were using Arabic numbers 1 to 10, etc. Toledo and Spain were fluorishing as one of world knowledge centers alongside Baghdad under muslim empires. Then Toledo fall the to Reconquista in 1085 CE (11th century). Please note that this event happened well before Fibbonacci time [1].
Mediterranean sea was under the auspice of muslim including Sicily even before the latter conquered by Normans. I suppose Normans learnt many civilization stuff with their interaction with muslim in the Mediterranean area, and later the same Normans conquered Britain.
>China developed gunpowder. European researchers improved on it both for internal wars and their wars of subjugation
This another jumping of history narrative from China straight to European contribution missing on the significant contributions lineage of muslim reseachers.
Tipu Sultan of Mysore in India was inventing the rocket using existing knowledge of gunpowder and beating British Empire several time in the wars [2]. Then when he was defeated the British created Arsenal research centers at Woolwich to study further the rockets and the ammunitions. Now England has the Arsenal football club.
>I want to know new things, and this exchange has lead to some fruitful readings for me.
Please do your scholarship properly or better try to get publish in the reputable journals rather then lurking too much in HN if you are really interested in the idea. Time and tides wait for no man.
Also read the Bible and Quran, the Truth will set you free.
According to the very citations you link to. I note you haven't pointed to additional supporting evidence for your arguments.
Nor have you said what's missing from the article that would be relevant to the reader, other than providing a list of names.
"Arab and muslim were in Europe well before Fibonacci"
I am using "Europe" in the same "Christian Europe" meaning that you did with "became the standard reference for European scholars (like Roger Bacon and Albert the Great) when they tried to understand tidal physics." and "the European scholars later found ocean tides is something that need to be calculated, analyzed and predicted due to their colonization effort around the world during the Renaissance time".
You can also include Sicily and Malta as part of Muslim Europe.
"This another jumping of history narrative from China"
That was me telling you that you have been ignoring Chinese history in your focus on Muslim history. If you want the author to include all the contributions you mentioned, then surely you want the author to also include the examples from China, right? I believe you said that doing otherwise would be
"immoral" and "plagiarism".
"Please do your scholarship properly"
I pointed you to Pliny to show that Romans know the Moon and Sun affected tides, and how to make tide predictions.
I pointed you to Needham so you could read about Chinese knowledge of tides and tide prediction, and to highlight how weak your "necessity" argument was.
You haven't pointed to any primary or secondary sources, only encyclopedia entries, and you think there must be mistakes in Wikipedia when it disagrees with your understanding.
I have read the Bible twice and taken a college course in the Bible. I also know the world was not covered by a great flood, that the story of the Exodus is not historical, and that Christian apologetics can justify anything as "the Truth" while they claim the Bible is 100% accurate.
Nor are they alone in promising "the Truth".
"Hinduism, the world’s oldest religion, has no beginning–it precedes recorded history. It has no human founder. It is a mystical religion, leading the devotee to personally experience the Truth within, finally reaching the pinnacle of consciousness where man and God are one." - https://www.hinduismtoday.com/hindu-basics/nine-beliefs-of-h...
The truth of the matter is that the Arabic and muslim are the master of the sea during this so called "dark ages" time, and many advancement has been made from navigation gear of the Arabic astrolobe to the Idrisi map.
In tide prediction Al-Kindi for example, has notable work on tides in his seminal book Treatise on the Efficient Cause of the Flow and Ebb back in 9th CE [1],[2].
[1]al-Kindi:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Kindi
[2] Al-Kindi:
https://muslimheritage.com/al-kindi/