Section 5
Whose Science is Arabic Science in Renaissance Europe?

© 1999
 George Saliba
Columbia University
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Conclusion
Few questions can now be safely raised that should serve as a conclusion and could also bring these varied bits of evidence together into a sharper focus. First, it should be stated that the two scientists whose life stories were reduced here to few snapshots were not alone. Dozens of European names could be cited at this point, most of them Italians, who shared some of the concerns of these two men. For example, one can cite the contemporary Giambattista Raimondi (1536-1614), who taught Arabic in Rome, and who was also interested in the mathematical sciences, and was the director and later owner of the same Medici Press. Andreas Alpagos, who was mentioned above, and his predecessor Hieronimo Ramnusio (d. 1486 in Beirut), the two Venetian physicians, who lived mostly in the previous century, both went to Syria in order to learn Arabic and in the case of Andreas returned to teach Medicine in Padua, as was also stated above, just about the same time when Copernicus was obtaining his doctoral degree in canon law from the nearby University of Ferrara.
These men were all involved in the production of science and could have easily produced full-fledged translations of Arabic scientific and philosophical texts, as was indeed done by Alpagos, for example, or could have made the contents of such texts known to their students and colleagues as was most probably done by people like Postel and others.  More importantly they could have incorporated what they learned of "Arabic" science into their "Latin/western" science as was done by Postel, or could have used their knowledge of "Arabic/Islamic" science to effect projects that were carried out by "Latin/western" institutions as was done by the Patriarch Ni‘matallah, for example.  It is in those instances that it becomes difficult to classify such scientific production under one cultural rubric or the other.
Looking at the evidence from the perspective of transmission of science from one culture to another, and in particular the transmission of the two Arabic mathematical theorems to Copernicus, the small fraction of evidence that has been just examined should make it clear that it also gives rise to at least two new problems as well as to many other important issues that should be reconsidered further. One of these problems has to do with the stance taken by the Renaissance scientists vis a vis the classical heritage, and who was seeking that heritage and for what purpose? And if that classical heritage was indeed being sought, why do we then find European scientists, contemporary with Copernicus seeking Arabic astronomical texts that were written specifically in objection to that same classical Greek heritage? And why would we then find a European press publishing an Arabic reworked version of the translation of Euclid’s Elements, instead of going to the original Greek or to one of the Arabic translations of the same, instead of the later reworked version?
The second issue has to do with the intellectual environment in Italy during the Renaissance and the role played by Arabic manuscripts in that period. The evidence illustrated very briefly here points to the distinct possibility that Arabic manuscripts were being studied in Renaissance Italy during the time of Copernicus in the same fashion we saw them still being studied by Postel and others at a slightly later date. One can legitimately argue that if later scientists like Postel still felt they needed Arabic manuscripts in order to study astronomy, wouldn’t the earlier scientists like Alpagos who went through the exercise of translating anew whole Arabic works into Latin instead of annotating them only, be also available for Copernicus to consult with him about the latest in Arabic astronomy of the time? The latest in that astronomy was the extensive efforts to reformulate Greek astronomy and the production of full-size texts attempting that enterprise and including the two theorems that were incorporated by Copernicus.
Whatever answers one can produce at this point, in the present state of our knowledge one has to at least admit the possibility that the thousands of Arabic scientific manuscripts that are still housed in European libraries, when investigated from that perspective, may have their own stories to tell, not only about the transmission of Arabic science to Renaissance Europe as the classical approach to the transmission of science would require, but also about the use made of such manuscripts by some Renaissance contemporaries of Copernicus like Andrea Alpagos, Postel, Raimondi, and many many others whose stories we have not even begun to unravel.
But for the purposes of designating science with a cultural, civilizational, or linguistic adjective the evidence illustrates very clearly the futility of that enterprise.  Instead, what becomes apparent is that certain problems and their solutions managed to cross cultural and linguistic borders, while others did not.  The question that should be asked is why those particular problems, and why those particular solutions, could manage to cross over, and why various groups of scientists working in a variety of cultural and linguistic domains would be interested in such problems or in such solutions. 
Even when such questions are asked, and their answers are debated -- and it will take more than political history to do that properly -- one could still ask the more perplexing question, namely, that of attaching cultural, civilizational, or linguistic adjectives to the scientists themselves when it is made so obvious that their works and concerns either knew no defined cultural, civilizational or linguistic boundaries, or whatever boundaries they encountered they were at best blurred boundaries. Most blatantly, one still has to find a name for the production of the Tusi Couple, that was first encountered in an Arabic text, written by a man who spoke Persian at home, and used that theorem, like many other astronomers who followed him and were all working in the "Arabic/Islamic" world, in order to reform classical Greek astronomy, and then have his theorem in turn be translated into Byzantine Greek towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, only to be used later by Copernicus and others in Latin texts of Renaissance Europe.  What name could one possibly dream up for that kind of science, and whose science it was anyway?
End
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