These Arabic numerals...

These Arabic numerals, as they are called, are far easier to calculate with than are Roman numerals. Arab texts describing these new mathematical developments as well as various summaries and commentaries on the Almagest eventually found their way in Latin translation to the West, where they became standard works for centuries.

Islamic astronomers refined many of the basic astronomical constants, for example, the length of the year and the eccentricity and inclination of the Sun’s (really the earth’s) orbit, data that were later used in the West. Although they worked within the Ptolemaic tradition, they questioned some of the constructs of Ptolemy. The equant (the point around which the angular motion was uniform), for example, was felt not to conform to the requirement of uniform circular motion.

Even epicycles were questioned, and attempts were made to construct a system that did not require them. From our point of view, however, the Muslims’ most important contribution was that they preserved much of the Greek learning, and then, beginning around the year 1000, became the means by which it was retransmitted to the West.

Cities near the boundaries between Islamic and Christian domains, such as Toledo in Spain, became centers of a “translation industry” (from Arabic to Latin) and Arabic words such as zenith, nadir, alchemy, algebra, and algorithm entered our language, along with star names such as Algol, Aldebaran, Alcor, Vega, Deneb, and Betelgeuse.

The richness, diversity, and power of the Greek writings made a deep impression on Western scholars, and soon they were attempting to accommodate them to the Christian tradition. Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) was a key figure in this effort (called Scholasticism), and he showed how much of Aristotle’s thought could be integrated into Christianity. This amalgam became the foundation for natural science in the West. Previous…