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12A.N. Nomozov
THE CONTRIBUTION OF SCIENTISTS OF THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD SCIENCE
The article presents the scientific worldview of the scientists of the Near and Middle East of the 9th-13th centuries. The influence of the achievements of the Arab-Muslim scientific thought on the development of world natural science is shown.
Key words: Arabic philosophy, theory of "dual truth ", science, natural science, world view, picture of the world.
Introduction.
The scientific worldview of the scientists of the Near and Middle East, which includes elements of oriental wisdom and millennial experience, was formed under the influence of the natural-philosophical teachings of the Greeks. The formation of the main provisions of the scientific picture of the world of the medieval Arab-Muslim East took place in the 9th-15th centuries. In general, three specific aspects in the development of Arab-Muslim science can be distinguished, which distinguish it from contemporary Western European medieval science, which contributed to the development of its rational, scientific content, and along with it, free-thinking and free-thinking: 1) the absence of a rigid system of subordination of the science of theology; 2) the relationship of the complex of natural science knowledge; 3) progressive assimilation of the achievements of ancient science.
Main part.
Ancient ancient scientific sources served as a starting point for a number of scientific ideas proposed by Eastern scientists and philosophers who worked in such cultural centers as Baghdad, Samarkand, Khorezm, Bukhara, as well as in the Caliphate of Cordoba on the Iberian Peninsula [1, p. 75]. During the period of the highest flowering of science (X-XI centuries), Arab philosophers and scientists proceeded in their research, like the Greeks; from the principle of the unity of nature and the integrity of the nature of science. Therefore, the traditions of encyclopedism were also characteristic of the representatives of science among the Arabs, some prominent scientists created treatises on various areas of science: "Statements of astronomy" by al-Ferghani, works on medicine by al-Razi, "Canon of medical science" by Ibn Sina, " Colliget" by Ibn Rushd and others, which were used in Europe until the 17th century [2, p. 65].
Philosophers enjoyed special authority among the Arabs. The well-known thinker al-Kindi (800-870) was recognized as the founder of Arabic Aristotelianism. One of the main representatives of Eastern Aristotelianism was Abu Nasr Ibn Muhammad al-Farabi (870-950), who had the nickname of the Second Teacher (i.e., after Aristotle). He developed the doctrine of the eternity of matter and the uncreation of the world, is the first creator of the Arabic encyclopedia. Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198) was a major natural philosopher. He accepted the materialistic views of Aristotle, rejecting the religious postulate of the divine creation of the world, defended the idea that the concept of motion makes sense only in relation to matter. Averroes, in his writings, affirmed the concept of "two truths", according to which the necessary knowledge for the general public is religious knowledge, in figurative and symbolic form, leading to 27 general information norms and rules of the hostel. Philosophy, which comprehends the principles (the laws of development of nature and society), is available only to scientists who operate with evidence-based judgments. Therefore, there are two truths - philosophical, i.e. scientific, and religious, the proof of which is not required. He recommended to remove the contradictions between them with allegorical interpretations, reducing them to common principles. Such a concept gave sufficient scope for the free development of the natural sciences, and therefore it is no coincidence that medicine, chemistry, mathematics and astronomy were greatly developed among the Arabs.
Consideration of the views of Ibn Rushd and the influence of his teachings on the development of progressive materialistic thought allows us to assert that the scientific work of this great philosopher was a natural link in the history of the development of advanced Arab-Muslim philosophy. Ibn Rushd, like Newton, could rightfully say: "I stood on the shoulders of giants," for he developed and raised to a new height that philosophical line, the foundations of which were laid before him by al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufeil. The work of Ibn Rushd is the pinnacle of advanced Arab-Muslim medieval philosophy. It can be said that the accumulation of elements of rationalism and materialism in the concepts of Ibn Rushd led, to a certain extent, to a qualitative leap in solving a number of important philosophical issues. This was manifested in the deepening of the rationalistic materialistic elements of peripatetism in the ontology and epistemology of the development of the tendencies of
© A.N. Nomozov, 2022.
deism and materialistic pantheism, the purification of rationalism from mystical layers, the sharp criticism of the monotheistic creationism of al-Ghazali and the Mutakallims, the defense of the principle of causality, etc. Eastern scientists continued to develop the physical and mathematical sciences, based on the results achieved in Greece, India and China. Of particular importance were the works of the Central Asian scientist Mohammed Ben Musa Khorezmi (787 - c. 850), the Arab astronomer-observer and mathematician al-Battani (Albategnius, 858-929), the Egyptian Ibn al-Khaytham (Algazena) ( 965-1039), Persian scientist Omar Khayyam (1040-1123), Persian astronomer, philosopher Nasiraddin at-Tusi (XII century). Astronomy has traditionally interested the Arabs. They accepted the Ptolemaic theory without radical changes. His main work "The Great Construction" ("Almagest") was translated into Arabic, thus, the creation of Ptolemy was preserved for future science thanks to the Arabs. The works of Ptolemy, together with other ancient sources, served as the starting point for a number of improvements in the geocentric system of the world developed by medieval scientists and philosophers, especially Ibn al-Khay-tham and Ibn al-Shatir, who belonged to the astronomical school of Nasiraddin Tuya.
Muhammad al-Battani (850-929) created an observatory in Antioch, compiled new astronomical tables, and contributed to progress in the field of observing solar and lunar eclipses. An astronomical observatory was founded in Baghdad under Caliph al-Ma'mun. In the 10th century, the Arab scientist al-Zufi prepared a star catalog, which not only gives the positions of the stars, but also indicates their magnitudes. Under the leadership of the Arab scientist Nasiraddin at-Tusi, the largest astronomical observatory at that time (XII century) was built in the city of Maragha (Iran), in which 100 scientists from different countries worked. Ahmed al-Fergani (Alfraganus) is the author of the outstanding "Book of Celestial Motions" - the forerunner of modern celestial mechanics. This work was translated into Latin and other European languages [3, p. 24]. Having built an observatory with very accurate measuring instruments for that time, the talented Samarkand astronomer Muhammad Taragai Ulugbek (1394-1449), grandson of Timur (Tamerlane), scientist, ruler of Samarkand since 1409, compiled Zaj is an astronomical reference book, the first independent after Hipparchus and more accurate: the positions of the stars are given in it not only in arc degrees, but also in minutes. It was later used by European astronomers, and it still has not lost its scientific value [3, p. 61].
Arab astronomers associated their observations with geographical knowledge. For example, in the territory of the Caliphate near the Red Sea, in 830 they made an attempt to measure the circumference of the Earth. They used (unlike Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian scientist who proposed a method for determining the radius of the Earth in the 3rd century AD) degree units for measuring the length of the meridian arc and determined it with much greater accuracy than Eratosthenes. Geographical research among the Arabs was not limited to the description of individual countries, they also included measuring procedures and their improvement. By order of Caliph al-Mamun, two separate systems for measuring degrees of latitude were compiled, the same was repeated in Europe only in the 16th century. In navigation, Arab travelers used maps and astronomical instruments. Astronomical research and observation stimulated the development of various branches of mathematics. Euclid's Elements were translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Having studied the works of Indian mathematicians, Arab scientists realized that the decimal number system used in India is more promising than the Roman system. Thanks to the works of Arab mathematicians, the use of the digit zero and the decimal system entered European science. A great merit in this was Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizmi (787-850). He revised the arithmetic of Diophantus and made a great contribution to the development of algebra. In the treatise "The Book of Restoration and Contrasting", al-Khwarizmi considers "restoration and reduction" as methods for solving equations. From this work came the name of the scientific discipline algebra. It is believed that the origin of the word algorithm is also associated with the name of al-Khwarizmi. Al-Khwarizmi's "Book..." was translated into Latin in 1143. It was studied by Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Bernoulli, Euler, Lomonosov and other scientists. The mathematician and astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, earlier than Regiomontanus, substantiated trigonometry as an independent science. In Europe, this came only in the 17th century. Giyas ed-Din Kashi became the founder of the theory of decimal fractions. Greece and India did not know such a theory. Kashi calculated the number n up to the 16th decimal place, discovered methods for solving 15 types of fourth-degree algebraic equations before Ferrari, and determined the sum of fourth powers of the natural series before Fermat. Significant works in the field of mathematics were carried out by Omar Khayyam, Ali Kushchi, Ibn Iraq, Nasir al-Din at-Tusi, and others. Equally significant was the contribution to the development of natural science made by Abu Reihan Muhammad Ibn Ahmed al-Biruni (9731050). Biruni created major works in mathematics, astronomy, physics, botany, geography, geology, mineralogy and other sciences. He proved that the change in the lunar phases depends on the different illumination of the Moon by the Sun, calculated with great accuracy the angle of inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, determined the radius of the Earth, and in the field of mineralogy established the density and specific gravity of many minerals and metals. He owns an extensive work "Collection of information about the knowledge of precious minerals", in which he described in detail more than 50 minerals, ores, metals, etc. Biruni attached great importance to the experiment, made experiments using instruments designed by himself. In terms of the breadth of interests, he can
be compared with Aristotle himself - the only difference is that Aristotle neglected the experimental method of research.
In the Middle Ages, in the scientific and philosophical environment of the Muslim East and the Christian West, the question of the physical reality of the Ptolemaic epicycles and deferents became a subject of special discussion. According to Abu Reyhan Biruni, epicycles and deferents have a very real physical existence. At the same time, another prominent representative of the scientific and philosophical thought of the Middle Ages, Ibn Rushd, although he admitted that epicycles and deferents themselves are needed to calculate and predict the position of the planets, he disputed the opinion that epicycles and deferents exist inside the real cosmos in the physical sense. . A native of the Central Asian city of Bukhara, Abu Ali Hussein Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (9801037), carried out his research in line with Arabic science. He was one of the greatest scientists of the Middle East, a natural philosopher, physician and writer. Avicenna made the greatest contribution to medicine. His main work in this area is The Canon of Medical Science, in which he summarized the achievements of medicine in Ancient Greece, Rome, India and Central Asia. This work in Latin, the language of science up to the 16th century, was reprinted 30 times. The Canon of Medicine became the textbook on medicine in European universities and for a long time remained the main medical manual in Muslim countries. In this and other medical works of Avicenna, the basics of human anatomy are described, the symptoms of various diseases are described, the causes of their occurrence and methods of treatment are considered. In the field of other sciences, he gave priority to the experiment. According to his philosophical views, Avicenna was a dualist, he believed that the world is eternal, that everything in it is formed from matter. At the same time, he admitted the existence of a higher principle, God. The world as an eternal duration in time is conditioned by the eternal God, who exists outside of time. He was a follower of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In Arabic, he commented on 20 volumes of Aristotle's writings. For the first time in the history of science, he discovered the law of the sequence of occurrence of sedimentary rocks on the surface of the Earth; 500 years later, it was rediscovered by the Danish naturalist Nikolaus (Niels Steno). This discovery served as the starting point for Avicenna's formulation of a more general scientific concept - the doctrine of the evolution of the earth's crust. The idea of evolution independently of Ibn Sina was also suggested by his contemporary Abu Reykhan Biruni. This doctrine was of great ideological significance due to the fact that the idea of a constant change in the earth's surface sharply contradicted the religious postulate of the one-time and cumulative creation of the entire cosmos and its stay in an eternal, absolutely unchanged state. The philosophical and scientific work of Ibn Sina is connected not with the development of mystical-intuitive elements in Arab philosophy, but with the strengthening of peripatetism in it, the strengthening of rationalistic tendencies. The views of the "prince of scientists" were, in comparison with all the philosophers of the East preceding him, the closest to Aris-totelianism. Restoring the ancient idea of the diversity of worlds, medieval European and Eastern scientists discussed the forms of existence of various worlds in the Universe. Ibn Sina and Biruni also discussed the problem of the existence of isolated worlds. According to Biruni, it is quite possible that another world has the same natural properties as our world, but only these properties are created in such a way that the directions of movement in it differ from the directions of movement in our world, and each of these worlds is separated from the other by some kind of barrier. . Judging by the arguments given by Ibn Sina against such a formulation of the question of the plurality of worlds, he was primarily concerned with the problem of the existence of emptiness and the related question of the physical nature of the barrier separating the worlds from each other. Biruni also allowed the possibility of the existence of other worlds of a different nature, separated by some barrier from our world. These questions, which interested the scientists of the Middle Ages, are correlated with some modern cosmological models of the spatial localization of the "world-antiworld" system, multidimensional spaces.
Conclusion.
In the VIII-X centuries, when the Arab Caliphate was gaining strength, the development of science took place throughout the East. Later, the invasions of Europeans, in particular the crusaders, contributed to the transfer of Arab culture to Europe. Medieval Arabic science was far superior to contemporary Western European science. The attitude to science is reflected in the sayings of the caliphs: "The greatest adornment of a person is knowledge", "The ink of a scientist is as worthy of respect as the blood of a martyr." Thus, in contrast to medieval Europe, where the Christian form of worldview mainly dominated, where natural scientists were persecuted and the fires of the Inquisition burned, in the Arab Muslim East, Islam encouraged the development of science, technology, culture, and therefore, the Muslim East was 300-400 years ahead of Europe. on all scientific and technical achievements of that period.
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NOMOZOV ABDUAZIZ MUSTAKIMOVICH - Master student of Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages.
