An Incomplete Education

“An incomplete education” looks like a guide for “dummies” to the history of science. It seems as if the authors wanted to sum up a whole lot of scientific data and to feature it in a way that such an audience could digest. The title of the book sounds a bit ironic suggesting that most of the newcomers might not receive enough insight into the science realm through a formal education system.

That being said, the chapter gave me the impression that it was to categorize the most pivotal areas in a bunch of scientific disciplines. As such, I had a tough time to grasp the linkage between numerous constructs being explicated. At times it seemed to me that the authors were rambling over too many disparate directions; so making it to figure out what the structure of the text is. However, the tone of the text reminds me of encyclopedias like Britannica where brevity and inclusiveness do mother the most.

The part which interested me the most was where some contentious things were addressed and the author’s were revealing their specific takes on them. For instance, they raised the question:” is it true that the Arabs kept science alive during the middle ages, while Europe slumbered?” In fact this question underscores the gap in the history of scince that I had noticed when I read though the previous readings. By placing too much emphasis on the west’s contribution to the evolution of science, the role of the other side of the globe was almost neglected.  Particularly when it comes to the middle ages those sorts of historians unrealistically draw the pictures such that once would conclude that the middle age stopped the progress of science. Although this could be the case in the Europe, the science was moving forward in other regions, particularly the Middle East. Surprisingly the chapter contends that Islam made science international. As a result, Arabic was in effect the great switching station. In this regard, it brings up the example of Al-Razi, a Persian physician, who wrote the Comprehensive Book, whose title suggests the overall range of the effort: The comprehensive Book summed up everything that had been known of medicine in Greece, India, and the Middle East and some of what had been known of medicine in China.

The paper I have chosen elaborates more on the role that was played by Al-Razi. It suggests that many important Greek medical texts were translated to Arabic in the 9^th century. For the most part Muslim physicians reflected on the Greek medicine, and seldom questioned it.  But this is not to say that they did not add anything to it. Of the physicians who were working in Baghdad in that period, Abu Bakr Muhamamd Al-Razi stands out as exceptional. He soon became one of the greatest and most prolific physicians of the medieval period, wiring over 200 works ranging from Medicine to subjects like philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy and alchemy.

His seminal work, the Comprehensive Book, encompasses what he had read to the date, and has a great deal of parallels with the core concepts of today’s medicine. For instance, it suggests that “The physician, even though he has his doubts, must always make the patient believe that he will recover, for the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind.” His comprehensive understanding of the medicine anchored in multiple sources made his book one of the greatest contribution to medicine to date. In fact this has been taught in many schools all over the world before the emergence of modern medical science.

Reference:

Tibi S. Al-Razi and Islamic medicine in the 9th Century. The James Lind Library 2005. Available online at www.jameslindlibrary.org