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Al-Jazari

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Re: Al-Jazari

#71

Post by infinitone »

otakucode wrote: post #66
Nux wrote: post #19

The Islamic Golden Age is pretty fantastic, not the first time I heard about it and usually a cause of pride among my muslim friends (and for good reason). Too bad we're witnessing the Islamic Dark Ages right now.

To use strokes so broad that any historian would like to harm me... what happened was basically that the Islamic world came up against the Crusades, and with Catholics murdering them with terrible savagery, they decided to seal themselves off from the world. And in that seclusion they missed out on the most important development in human history - The Enlightenment. Possible the greatest achievement of The Enlightenm…

I see where you're coming from, but your conclusion is incorrect. Monotheistic religions, atleast the unfabricated, do not profess the idea that this material world is wholly bad. It professes balance, between the material and the spiritual, and that if you lose balance and become too materialistic (as what we see in today's 'depression' cases) you will fall astray.

I think this idea is very true, and we see that both religious people and non-religious have tipped the balance too far on either side.

Re: Al-Jazari

#72

Post by knodi123 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #62
frozenport wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they have been going for the last 700 years. Which makes me feel that the feelings of pride my Muslim friends feel are unjustified as they have very little in common with the world that made al-Jazari. Or perhaps more importantly, the rest of the world has advanced in 700 years, but they have staid behind.

Generally, I don't completely get why do humans feel pride for things they didn't have anything to do with? Probably has something to do with ego.

more about tribalism. "I share in the glory of every member of my tribe".

Re: Al-Jazari

#73

Post by acqq »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #60

The medieval polymaths were a fascinating bunch! Hildegard of Bingen[1] was a contemporary of al-Jazari, and one of the most influential European women of the late Middles Ages. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Church[2] – a title given by the Catholic Church to only 35 people over the past 2,000 years! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen [&] http://www.hildegard-society.org/p/aca…

But I don't see that she did any engineering, which is why al-Jazari is potentially interesting.

Regarding al-Jazari, the question is only how significant he really was, compared to the centuries older Greek engineers like those that produced, for example, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Re: Al-Jazari

#74

Post by maximumoverload »

infinitone wrote: post #71
otakucode wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use strokes so broad that any historian would like to harm me... what happened was basically that the Islamic world came up against the Crusades, and with Catholics murdering them with terrible savagery, they decided to seal themselves off from the world. And in that seclusion they missed out on the most important development in human history - The Enlightenment. Possible the greatest achievement of The Enlightenm…

I see where you're coming from, but your conclusion is incorrect. Monotheistic religions, atleast the unfabricated, do not profess the idea that this material world is wholly bad. It professes balance, between the material and the spiritual, and that if you lose balance and become too materialistic (as what we see in today's 'depression' cases) you will fall astray. I think this idea is very true, and we see that bot…

> Monotheistic religions, atleast the unfabricated

Ummmm.

Are there any unfabricated religions?

Re: Al-Jazari

#75

Post by MaysonL »

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

What alphabet is used for the letters in the diagrams[0]? It's not Arabic, and it looks sort of like Greek (or maybe Phoenician), but different. 0. Such as this one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Al-jazari...

Seems like an alchemical alphabet such as:

http://www.925-1000.com/alchemy.html

http://alchemylab.com/download_fonts.htm

Re: Al-Jazari

#76

Post by Scriptor »

otakucode wrote: post #66
Nux wrote: post #19

The Islamic Golden Age is pretty fantastic, not the first time I heard about it and usually a cause of pride among my muslim friends (and for good reason). Too bad we're witnessing the Islamic Dark Ages right now.

To use strokes so broad that any historian would like to harm me... what happened was basically that the Islamic world came up against the Crusades, and with Catholics murdering them with terrible savagery, they decided to seal themselves off from the world. And in that seclusion they missed out on the most important development in human history - The Enlightenment. Possible the greatest achievement of The Enlightenm…

> Catholics murdering them with terrible savagery

I see what you're trying to get at, but you make it sound as though the Islamic world was brutally traumatized by the Crusades. The savagery was no more terrible than any war of that time. And they didn't really "seal themselves off from the world". They did, however, seal themselves off from Europe culturally and intellectually. Politically and economically there was still plenty of engagement.

What the Crusades did do was to further hamper the adoption of European ideas in the Islamic World. While the Crusaders were happy to adopt both goods and knowledge from the Middle East, Arabs and Turks saw little reason to embrace any European customs and ways of thought. The Crusaders were invaders in their own lands and for that reason alone a typical Arab's perception of Europeans would've been much worse than a typical Frank's perception of "Saracens".

Amin Maalouf gives an example towards the end of "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" (decent book, by the way, though I liked "Arab Historians of the Crusades" better). As the Crusades progressed and Europe entered the high middle ages peasants in the West started to gain more rights and privileges as the feudal system continued to weaken. However, none of this was seen in the Middle East, where local lords ruled their holdings with an iron grip and peasant rights barely improved.

Re: Al-Jazari

#77

Post by chetanahuja »

knodi123 wrote: post #72
lotsofpulp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, I don't completely get why do humans feel pride for things they didn't have anything to do with? Probably has something to do with ego.

more about tribalism. "I share in the glory of every member of my tribe".

Also known as "Teamwork". The basic mechanisms of tribalism are the same whether the scale is a world religion, a country, a ship's crew, a basketball team or whatever.

Re: Al-Jazari

#78

Post by ekianjo »

knodi123 wrote: post #72
lotsofpulp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, I don't completely get why do humans feel pride for things they didn't have anything to do with? Probably has something to do with ego.

more about tribalism. "I share in the glory of every member of my tribe".

That's what we call "Halo Effect", as well.

Re: Al-Jazari

#79

Post by ekianjo »

oblio wrote: post #4

Please continue posting such links. I know some people would like only links about "hacking" (i.e. coding), but such articles really make me understand the "we are standing on the shoulders of giants" quote. Especially about lesser advertised cultures such as the Islamic one.

> Especially about lesser advertised cultures such as the Islamic one.

The idea of a singular entity called "Islamic culture" is something very recent in History though, Pan-Islamism. That's from the 19th century at best.

Re: Al-Jazari

#80

Post by 4891 »

otakucode wrote: post #66
Nux wrote: post #19

The Islamic Golden Age is pretty fantastic, not the first time I heard about it and usually a cause of pride among my muslim friends (and for good reason). Too bad we're witnessing the Islamic Dark Ages right now.

To use strokes so broad that any historian would like to harm me... what happened was basically that the Islamic world came up against the Crusades, and with Catholics murdering them with terrible savagery, they decided to seal themselves off from the world. And in that seclusion they missed out on the most important development in human history - The Enlightenment. Possible the greatest achievement of The Enlightenm…

The Enlightenment is a direct consequence of the Protestant Reformation that preceded it a few centuries prior. The key ideas of Protestantism was that faith should be a) based on reason and b) involve a direct communion with God, without intervening priests, ritual or hierarchy.

If this sounds appealing to you, you are basically a Protestant, possibly a post-God Protestant aka "atheist"/"agnostic"/"secular". In Catholicism, as with most religions, God (or gods or spirit) is intertwined with every aspect of life. The idea that religion is purely about beliefs is a Protestant idea - for most people, their religion is about community, ritual, and accessing deep emotions or altered states of consciousness. Protestantism rejected most of this in favour of a purely 'rational' faith, from where it's baby steps towards giving up faith entirely in favour of pure reason. (Evidence: atheism flourished in the traditionally Protestant countries of Northern Europe and the Anglosphere).

"People are going to have to choose to believe that their religious beliefs are "just religious" and have no serious relevance to the material world (the exact notion their religion decries as the ultimate heresy) and join the modern world"

Has no relevance to the material world === "not real"; in other words, people are going to have to give up their religions.

"Those ideas are absolutely and totally required to support the idea of coexistence of peoples of different faiths."

I.e., for people of different faiths to co-exist they have to give up their faiths (in favour of 'secularism' or 'moderate-ism' aka Protestantism).

Much more on this idea here: http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/how-...

Related point: the West has 'Protestant-ised' several world faiths (in fact the concept of 'world religion' is arguably the creation of 19th century Protestant missionaries and scholars).

e.g. Buddhism: http://meaningness.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/protestant-buddh...

And Hinduism: http://mitrailleuse.net/2014/08/08/the-westernization-of-hin...

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