Science and Islam (2) Methodology

[1:54:45]

"On my journey so far, I've been overwhelmed by the sheer intellectual ambition of medieval Islamic scientists. When their leaders asked them to find out the size of the world, scholars like Al-Biruni used mathematics in startling new ways to reach out to describe the universe. And as trade and commerce boomed, scientists like Al-Razi responded by developing a new kind of experimental science - chemistry. But if there's one Islamic scientist we should remember above all others, it is, in my view, Ibn Al-Haitham, for doing so much to create what we now call the scientific method.

The scientific method is, I believe, the single most important idea the human race has ever come up with. There is no other strategy that tells us how to find out how the universe works and what our place in it is. Of course it has also delivered technologies that have transformed our lives. So the next time you jet off on holiday, or use your mobile phone, or get vaccinated against a deadly disease, remember Ibn Al-Haitham, Ibn Sina, Al-Biruni, and countless other Islamic scholars a thousand years ago, who struggled to make sense of the universe, using crude mirrors and astrolabes. They didn't get all the right answers, but they did teach us how to ask the right questions."

~Jim Al-Khalili
Professor of Theoretical Physics
University of Surrey