Science is the lifeblood of modern life. It is the foundation of our technology. Its discoveries prolong our lives and save the lives of those we love. It fascinates us and sometimes disturbs us with its mind-boggling truths. But what is science, and who was its first practitioner?

Science is the study of the physical world, but it is not just a field of interest. It is a discipline—a system of inquiry that adheres to a specific methodology. That methodology is known as the scientific method. It consists of seven steps: 1) observation; 2) statement of a problem or question; 3) formulation of a hypothesis, or a possible answer to the problem or question; 4) testing of the hypothesis with an experiment; 5) analysis of the experiment’s results; 6) interpretation of the data and formulation of a conclusion; and 7) publication of the findings. One can study nature without adhering to the scientific method, of course. The result, however, is not science.

Many people throughout history have studied nature without the scientific method. Some of the best-known people to do so were the ancient Greeks. Scholars such as Aristotle attempted to explain natural phenomena, but they did not test their ideas with experiments. They based their findings on logic. As a result, they often erred. These mistakes were later discovered by scholars using the scientific method.

In 1589, for example, Galileo Galilei devised a series of experiments to test Aristotle’s ideas about falling bodies. He found Aristotle’s claim that heavy bodies fall at a faster rate than light bodies to be false. Galileo was not the first person to conduct experiments or to follow the scientific method, however. European scholars had been conducting experiments for three hundred years, ever since a Franciscan monk named Roger Bacon advocated experimentation in the thirteenth century. One of Bacon’s books, Perspectiva (Optics) challenges ancient Greek ideas about vision and includes several experiments with light that include all seven steps of the scientific method.

Bacon’s Perspectiva is not an original work, however. It is a summary of a longer work entitled De aspectibus (The Optics). Perspectiva follows the organization of De aspectibus and repeats its experiments step by step. But De aspectibus is not an original work, either. It is the Latin translation of a book written in Arabic entitled Kit?b al-Man?zir (Book of Optics). Written around 1021, Kit?b al-Man?zir predates Roger Bacon’s summary of it by 250 years. The author of this groundbreaking book was a Muslim scholar named Ab? ‘Al? al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.

Born in Basra (located in what is now Iraq) in 965, Ibn al-Haytham—known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen—wrote more than 200 books and treatises on a wide range of subjects. He was the first person to apply algebra to geometry, founding the branch mathematics known as analytic geometry.

Ibn al-Haytham’s use of experimentation was an outgrowth of his skeptical nature and his Muslim faith. He believed that human beings are flawed and only God is perfect. To discover the truth about nature, he reasoned, one had to allow the universe to speak for itself. “The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them,” Ibn al-Haytham wrote in Doubts Concerning Ptolemy, “but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration.”

To test his hypothesis that “lights and colors do not blend in the air,” for example, Ibn al-Haytham devised the world’s first camera obscura, observed what happened when light rays intersected at its aperture, and recorded the results. This is just one of dozens of “true demonstrations,” or experiments, contained in Kit?b al-Man?zir.

By insisting on the use of verifiable experiments to test hypotheses, Ibn al-Haytham established a new system of inquiry—the scientific method—and earned a place in history as the first scientist.

About the Author:

An award-winning author of books for young adults, Bradley Steffens is a frequent contributor to online and print publications, including Gig and Broker Agent Magazine. A copywriter with 25 years experience, he creates website content for health insurance, life insurance, and homeowner’s insurance professionals. His most recent book, Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, is the world’s first biography of the medieval Muslim scholar known in the West as Alhazen.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Was an Iraqi Scholar the World’s First Scientist?

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