Obama Flunks History at Cairo U
Posted by: "S. Kalyanaraman" [email protected] kalyan97
Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:49 am (PDT)
*Almost every advance he attributed to the Muslims in his big speech
should
be credited to someone else.*
June 7, 2009 - by Frank J.
Tipler<http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/author/frankjtipler/>
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*Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane
University. .
He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford
University Press) and the author of The Physics of Immortality and The
Physics of Christianity, both published by Doubleday.*
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In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, President Barack Obama
claimed<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html?_r=1
>:
“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam.
It was
Islam — at places like Al-Azhar University — that carried the light of
learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s
Renaissance
and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that
developed
the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation;
our
mastery of pens and printing.”
Obama is not much of a “student of history” if he believes this.
Almost
every advance he attributes to the Muslims was due to someone else.
The non-Muslim Chinese invented the magnetic compass and printing
(Gutenberg
invented not printing, but movable type). The non-Muslim Hindu Indians
invented algebra and the decimal numbering system. The non-Muslim
European
Christians invented the university.
I can’t address advances in medicine, but I have studied the history
of
astronomy and physics. The Muslims contributed nothing.
All modern physics descends from Galileo (1564 -1642); all modern
astronomy
from Copernicus (1473-1543). If you study Galileo’s works carefully,
as I
have, you see that he started with the achievements of the Greek
mathematical physicist Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212
BC). If
you study Copernicus’ works carefully, as I have, you will see that
Copernicus’ great book *On the Revolutions* is essentially a
heliocentric
re-working of the geocentric astronomy textbook by the Greek Ptolemy
(c. 90
AD - 168 AD). Copernicus mostly used even Ptolemy’s data for the
positions
of the planets.
Note the dates for Archimedes/Galileo and Ptolemy/Copernicus. It is
as if
the Muslim world never existed. As far as their fundamental
contributions to
physics and astronomy, it did not.
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.
Certainly, the Muslims were a conduit for the discoveries of others.
The
word “algebra” is indeed derived from an Arabic word. The books of
Archimedes and Ptolemy used by Galileo and Copernicus were indeed
translations into Latin from the Arabic. But let us never forget that
Archimedes and Ptolemy wrote their books in Greek, not Arabic. They
were
Greeks, not Muslims.
Most of the names for the brightest stars are of Arabic origin,
because the
names of these stars given in Ptolemy’s textbook were never
translated from
the Arabic. But do you think that the Arabs were the first humans to
observe
Rigel and Betelguese, the first and second brightest stars in Orion?
The reason Muslims never developed fundamental physics is because the
leading Muslim theologians declared the idea of fixed physical laws
to be
heretical. The Qur’an (verse 6:64) states: “The Jews have said,
‘God’s hand
is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what
they
have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He
will.” The
standard Muslim interpretation of this passage has been that there
cannot be
unchanging physical laws because Allah may change the laws at any
moment. In
1982, the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan,
criticized a
chemistry textbook by saying: “There is latent poison present in the
subheading Energy Causes Changes because it gives the impression
that energy
is the true cause rather than Allah. Similarly it is unIslamic to
teach
that mixing hydrogen and oxygen automatically produces water. The
Islamic
way is this: when atoms of hydrogen approach atoms of oxygen, then
by the
Will of Allah water is produced.” The implication is clear: next week,
Allah may change his mind about water being a compound of hydrogen and
oxygen. With this sort of worldview, how could one possibly be a
scientist?
The cosmology of the Qur’an is obviously geocentric, and as a
consequence,
Al-Azhar University, which Obama singles out for praise in his
speech, still
teaches Ptolemaic astronomy.
There was one truly great “Muslim” physicist, the Nobel Prize winning
Pakistani, Mohammed Abdus Salam. I put “Muslim” in quotes, because
Salam
belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, a sect that accepts modern
science.
But in 1974, the Pakistani parliament declared the Ahmadi sect
heretical,
and its members are currently being persecuted in Pakistan.
Contemporary
Muslim historians generally do not list Salam as an important Muslim
scientist. Had he remained in Pakistan, he quite possibly would have
been
killed.
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.
I never expected to hear a president of the United States do so.
*Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane
University.
He is the co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford
University Press) and the author of The Physics of Immortality and The
Physics of Christianity both published by Doubleday.*
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