On his book Success and Suppression: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy in the Renaissance
Cover Interview of April 05, 2017
In a nutshell
If you were asked to name some famous figures
of Renaissance culture, you would probably name Leonardo, Michelangelo or
Erasmus. But you could have mentioned some Arabic names too. There was an
Arabic side to the European Renaissance, which is hardly known today. Arabic
scientists and philosophers were mandatory reading at many Renaissance universities,
especially in medicine, philosophy and astrology. On the book market of the
time, Latin translations of Arabic scientific works were very successful. New,
often multi-volume editions of these works steadily poured forth from presses in
Venice, in Lyon, in Basle. The great names of Arabic science – Avicenna,
Averroes, Mesue, Rhazes – were to be found everywhere on the academic bookshelves
of Renaissance Europe. Every educated person knew these names.
This is the success side of the story. But
there is also a suppression side to it. There was open opposition to Arabic
traditions in Western culture, especially from humanists and church officials. Radical
humanist scholars, in their enthusiasm for a return to the Greek and Latin
sources, polemicized against Arabic science and demanded that university
curricula be purged of Arabic authorities. As a result, these authors
disappeared from many university curricula of medicine in the early sixteenth
century – only to return, at least partially, at the end of the century.
In philosophy, the Arabic writer Averroes gave
rise to a deep division among Renaissance intellectuals. He had dedicated
partisans and bitter enemies. Many university professors believed Averroes to
be the new Aristotle, but humanists protested against his lack of Greek; church
officials against his alleged denial of personal immortality. In 1489 and 1513,
the Bishop of Padua and the Lateran Council issued condemnations of select
theses by Averroes. The effect can be traced in the intellectual biographies of
some of Averroes’ partisans. But Averroes continued to be read and admired
until the end of the sixteenth century.
The attempts to suppress Arabic traditions
left clear traces in Renaissance scientific culture. Medicine, philosophy and
astrology, the three areas of Renaissance learning most clearly influenced by
Arabic sources, were greatly transformed by the polemical impact, with
considerable gains and losses. The Arabic traditions lost their dominating
position in many areas and subareas, in spite of the great success of some Arabic
theories that we can still observe in the Renaissance. In this sense, the
Renaissance is the period in which the West began to forget its debt to Arabic
culture.
My book is about this double story of success
and suppression.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
In a nutshell
If you were asked to name some famous figures of Renaissance culture, you would probably name Leonardo, Michelangelo or Erasmus. But you could have mentioned some Arabic names too. There was an Arabic side to the European Renaissance, which is hardly known today. Arabic scientists and philosophers were mandatory reading at many Renaissance universities, especially in medicine, philosophy and astrology. On the book market of the time, Latin translations of Arabic scientific works were very successful. New, often multi-volume editions of these works steadily poured forth from presses in Venice, in Lyon, in Basle. The great names of Arabic science – Avicenna, Averroes, Mesue, Rhazes – were to be found everywhere on the academic bookshelves of Renaissance Europe. Every educated person knew these names.
This is the success side of the story. But there is also a suppression side to it. There was open opposition to Arabic traditions in Western culture, especially from humanists and church officials. Radical humanist scholars, in their enthusiasm for a return to the Greek and Latin sources, polemicized against Arabic science and demanded that university curricula be purged of Arabic authorities. As a result, these authors disappeared from many university curricula of medicine in the early sixteenth century – only to return, at least partially, at the end of the century.
In philosophy, the Arabic writer Averroes gave rise to a deep division among Renaissance intellectuals. He had dedicated partisans and bitter enemies. Many university professors believed Averroes to be the new Aristotle, but humanists protested against his lack of Greek; church officials against his alleged denial of personal immortality. In 1489 and 1513, the Bishop of Padua and the Lateran Council issued condemnations of select theses by Averroes. The effect can be traced in the intellectual biographies of some of Averroes’ partisans. But Averroes continued to be read and admired until the end of the sixteenth century.
The attempts to suppress Arabic traditions left clear traces in Renaissance scientific culture. Medicine, philosophy and astrology, the three areas of Renaissance learning most clearly influenced by Arabic sources, were greatly transformed by the polemical impact, with considerable gains and losses. The Arabic traditions lost their dominating position in many areas and subareas, in spite of the great success of some Arabic theories that we can still observe in the Renaissance. In this sense, the Renaissance is the period in which the West began to forget its debt to Arabic culture.
My book is about this double story of success and suppression.