Science and Mithl: Demonstrations in Arabic and Persian Scientific Traditions

摘要

Addressing the Arabic and Persian scientific traditions in eastern Islamic lands, this study focuses on the nature and place of demonstrations in optics and mechanics, sub-disciplines of geometry. A focus on the comparative context of demonstrations facilitates clearer understanding of local coordinates that affected the development of these fields, which are shown to have had distinct, and sometimes opposite, cases of transmission and application in Islamic and European lands. Sample demonstrations are presented in an appendix to highlight the concept and terminology of “mithl” to identify shifts from geometrical to experimental methods in the case of optics, and from physical productions to model duplications in the case of mechanics.