RSA - Pathfinders: The golden age of Arabic science

Pathfinders: The golden age of Arabic science

30th Sep 2010; 13:00

(full recording including audience Q&A)
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RSA Thursday

Although popular accounts of the history of science typically show no major advances taking place between the achievements of the ancient Greeks and those of the European Renaissance - a 1,000-year period dismissed as the Dark Ages - there was in fact, during that time, an astonishing flowering of invention and innovation taking place in the Muslim world.

For 700 years, the international language of science was Arabic; and Baghdad, the capital of the mighty Abbasid Empire, was the centre of the intellectual world. This period produced huge advances in philosophy, astronomy, medicine and mathematics. We can look back to Baghdad and see the origins of the modern scientific method, the world's first physicist and the world's first chemist; advances in surgery and anatomy, the birth of geology and anthropology; not to mention remarkable feats of engineering.

Born in Baghdad, physicist and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili was educated in Iraq until the age of 16 and it was there, being taught by Arabic teachers in Arabic that he first heard and learnt about the great Arab scientists and philosophers.

Jim Al-Khalili has long championed the influence of Islam on science and he visits the RSA to bring renewed attention to the considerable Arab influence in our understanding of science today. He argues that the West needs to see the Islamic world through new eyes and the Islamic world, in turn, to take pride in its extraordinarily rich heritage.

Speaker: Jim Al-Khalili, professor of physics at the University of Surrey, broadcaster and author of "Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science" (Allen Lane, 2010)

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsaalkhalili