Anyone here read Al Khalili’s “House of Wisdom”?

General Discussion
1

Anyone here read (or listened to) Al Khalili’s “House of Wisdom”?
The content of that book could make for a fun discussion.

“The House of Wisdom, How the Arabic science saved ancient knowledge and gave us the Renaissance.” (2012)

New York Journal of Books provides an interesting over view of the book.

Academia.edu offers a PDF.

There’s also this informative talk Al Khalili gave in 2013.

Humanists UK, posted at YouTube, April 16, 2014

The Forgotten Legacy of Arabic Science

British Humanist Association Holyoake Lecture 2013 presented by theoretical physicist and president of the British Humanist Association, Professor Jim Al-Khalili.

Here’s a short cut to the book.
He’s a pretty good storyteller, so fun to listen to, and it’s really fascinating stuff, if the evolution of knowledge is one of your things. :wink:

you game ?

2

I do like Kahlili and his thoughts on the Islamic golden age. Also, I’ve a couple half read books at the moment.

3

:+1:t2: Agreed. I’ve also liked Kahlili’s physics explorations, very accessible and he doesn’t fly off into the sorts of speculative fancies, that drive me to irritation.

I’d meant to do more with his thread by putting together a bit of a book report, but my time for stuff like that is too limited, . . . and then James Poskett came along and blew me outta the water with his “Horizons, The Global Origins of Modern Science.”

I’m glad I listen to (then read) Kahlili’s book first and would recommend that sequence to others. Kahlili goes into fascinating detail about Islamic scientific thinkers of the past. He weaves together a fascinating story that puts the achievements of today’s science into a much more realist framework.

Where Kahlili dedicated himself to highlight Islamic contributions, Poskett goes further a field to touch on every corner of our globe, and further into our past, introducing us to the scientific understanding aboriginals possessed, and how they had at least as much to do with the western age of discovery and enlightenment, as the plundering murders that sailed in on their ships.

In my youth those “explorers” and “adventures” were my heroes. It was weird, as a young adult, getting “woked” to the fact of what kinds of human monsters of greed run a muck that they actually were. Looking around these days and being witness to where it’s all lead us, it’s no wonder we’re such a disaster. Oh but I’m rambling.

Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science Hardcover – March 22, 2022

by James Poskett

“A radical retelling… Poskett deftly blends the achievements of little-known figures into the wider history of science… The book brims with clarity.”—Financial Times

The history of science as it has never been told before: a tale of outsiders and unsung heroes from far beyond the Western canon that most of us are taught.

When we think about the origins of modern science we usually begin in Europe. We remember the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. But the history of science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavor. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques that came from Arabic and Persian texts. Newton’s laws of motion used astronomical observations made in Asia and Africa. When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopedia. And when Einstein studied quantum mechanics, he was inspired by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose.

Horizons is the history of science as it has never been told before, uncovering its unsung heroes and revealing that the most important scientific breakthroughs have come from the exchange of ideas from different cultures around the world. In this ambitious, revelatory history, James Poskett recasts the history of science, uncovering the vital contributions that scientists in Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific have made to this global story.

4

With very few exceptions, all great scientists stand on the shoulders of those who came before.

5

How ironic, been working in the ballpark - better defining my issue old obsolete self-absorbed, self-centered, “abrahamic mindset” :wink: :clinking_glasses: So, this is an interesting diversion.

Hmmm, now there’s an interesting philosophical question.
… as in, What was the cascade of thoughts that lead to that wording?

Do you have any exceptions in mind?

I’m at the flailing stage here, starting more paragraphs then finishing, and general chaos - but what the hell, why not, have at it might help me focus and get this thing moving again.

…

That (Hoffman, Hamerhoff approaches) can be summed up as a cumulative approach. Namely, that consciousness is a product of quantum (or some such) building blocks.

But, I ask you to consider an evolution where consciousness is an inevitable product of the emergent products & proprieties of biology, slamming up against the wall physical reality.

“Nature” isn’t a dreamer or planner, “Nature” is a problem solver.

—————

It’s not all that mystical. Down at the very tiniest of tiny, there’s a background hum of energy, where primordial energy coalesces into bundles of confined, defined energy states, these are sub-atomic particles, that become atomic particles that become a building array of molecular arrangements. The building blocks of black holes, galaxies, universes, and ever so rare, and unique Earth, where her geological evolution triggered a biological awaking and nurtured an evolutionary pageant of astounding results.
( Sean Carroll, Arvin Ash )

“Superposition,” “quantum-collapse,” and other such quantum marvels are mathematical ways of explaining the physical data, we shouldn’t imbue them with mysterious power, keeping in mind that they are human constructs for better understanding stuff way beyond our ability to grasp.

——————————

At the primordial level of matter, decisions aren’t required. There are exacting ways energy and matter behave, probability patterns don’t imply decision making in action.

Consider, “Nature” isn’t a dreamer, nor a planner, “Nature” is a problem solver.

It’s not until the complexity of biological molecular components started existing that the need for choices arouse. Layers of emergent behaviors, folds within folds of cumulative harmonic poetry flowing down the cascade of time,

Starting with drive
bumping into feedback,
bumping into challenges,
bumping into processing,
bumping into choices,
bumping into outcomes,
bumping into problems solving,
bumping into accumulation,
bumping into learning,
bumping into development,
bumping into memory,
bumping into increasing complexity,
bumping into emergent transitions,
bumping into evolution and progress and consequences, and so on.

The origins of consciousness is

Western society’s philosophical foundation is firmly built upon the shoulders of great thinkers that had no idea about biology, or evolution, or this global biosphere that created us, or the cosmos that surrounded us. All they had was their thoughts, filtered through learning and ego with drive and determination. I do not discount their thinking process, or the foundation they laid out for us. Our society, as we know it, wouldn’t exist without this background.

1 Like
6

How common is independent discovery?

An old divide in the study of innovation is whether ideas come primarily from individual/group creativity, or whether they are “in the air”, so that anyone with the right set of background knowledge will be able to see them. As evidence of the latter, people have pointed to prominent examples of multiple simultaneous discovery:

  • Isaac Newton and Gottfried Liebnitz developed calculus independent of each other
  • Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace independently developed versions of the theory of evolution via natural selection
  • Different inventors in different countries claim to have invented the lightbulb (Thomas Edison in the USA, Joseph Swan in the UK, Alexander Lodygin in Russia)
  • Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Grey submitted nearly simultaneous patent applications for the invention of the telephone

In 1922, Ogburn and Thomas compiled a list of nearly 150 examples of multiple independent discovery (often called “twin” discoveries or “multiples); wikipedia provides many more. These exercises are meant to show that once a new invention or discovery is “close” to existing knowledge, then multiple people are likely to have the idea at the same time. It also implies scientific and technological advance have some built in redundancy: if Einstein had died in childhood, someone else would have come up with relativity.

But in fact, all these lists of anecdote show is it is possible for multiple people to come up with the same idea. We don’t really know how common it is, because these lists make no attempt to compile a comprehensive population survey of ideas. What do we find if we do try to do that exercise?