From early Greek philosophy to the Golden Age of Islam, I often wonder how and what was the culture that contributed to these periods of explosions of free thought and innovation? What were the impetus of Greek ideas and the early stages of science during the Golden Age of Islam?
Greek Philosophy And Thought
Where would free and innovative thought be without the great Greek philosophers? Without Thales of Miletus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, could the Golden Age of Islam have existed? Without Al-Zahrawi, Abbas ibn Firnas, Al-Biruni, Avicenna, Averroes, Ibn al-Nafis, Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Alhazen, Ibn Khaldun could the Renaissance have existed? Without Leonardo Da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Andreas Vesalius, Francis Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes would 19th and 20th-century modern science and philosophy have existed?
Socrates, considered the father of Western philosophy, gave us the innovation of the Socratic method. His ideas of logic and rationalism were radical and they eventually inspired the scientific contributions of future philosophers and thinkers. Origins of intellectual thought, humanism, social theory, economic ideas, and democracy can be traced back to ancient Greek ideas. The first democracy can likely be traced back to Athens. An attempt of moving from central authoritative power to a decentralized style of governance and representation was and is of enormous influence to Western democracies of today.
The Golden Age Of Islam — A New Innovation.
Mohammad was the initiator of a new shift in thought that emphasized erudition among not just the elite aristocrats, but of every single citizen. You could say Mohammad was a catalyst of literacy in the period of the world where literacy and erudition were a minority. Mohammad was not just a social innovator, but also an argument can be made, that he was also an economic innovator.
