Afghanistan Project CMS

<p>Today many people commonly think of science as a European development that gradually spread to other parts of the world--and conflicted with systems of faith.</p> <p>But without a doubt, the history of science is more complicated than that. Science today owes as much to Central Asia and the Middle East as it does to Europe.</p> <p>Every culture in the world has developed a system of knowledge which it has refined and reshaped over time. Those systems are based on experience in the world: people see something happen, and they draw conclusions about why and how it happened.</p> <p>Theories are tested again and again and if they remain unchallenged, then they become fact within that culture.</p> <p>But modern science as we know it today differs from these other knowledge systems in an important way. Imagine that a town is flooded and half its people are killed. Anyone would want to know why this tragedy occurred. Scientists would look at the surrounding circumstances. Was there a levee that broke? Were there unusually high rains? Was the town built too close to the water&rsquo;s edge?</p> <p>There are other questions that science wouldn&rsquo;t ask. It wouldn&rsquo;t ask, for example, why those people in that town on that day happened to be the ones who were killed. Why was Jeff killed but Jim wasn&rsquo;t? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why us?</p> <p>Today, modern science distinguishes itself from other systems of knowledge in the world not by the questions it asks, but rather by the questions it doesn&rsquo;t ask.</p> <p>Looking back at history, we see that in fact, the body of knowledge we call science has not been solely a European concern. People all over the world have always been asking questions about the physical world and have contributed their answers to today&rsquo;s wide body of knowledge.</p> <p>Around the 8th century, the Muslim world was alive with scientific inquiry. Arabs based in Iraq were beginning to explore Greek and Indian texts, allowing them to make unprecedented discoveries which would spread to Europe and the Hindu Kush.</p> <p>The Arabs based in Baghdad made quantum leaps forward, which had reverberations in Afghanistan in terms of calendar making. Again reverberations in Afghanistan in medicines and mathematics and in all of those areas through the various Islamic dynasties that ruled in Afghanistan.</p> <p>In the next century, more innovation and intellectual exchange emerged under the ruling Samanid Empire.</p> <p>Particularly the Samanids, who came to power around the 9th and 10th centuries AD and were based in central Asia brought and transmitted Arabic and Iranian innovations in all of these areas of astronomy, medicine and mathematics.</p> <p>In particular, two great thinkers born in the 10th century forever changed the history of science.</p> <p>Avicenna was born in Bukhara, which today is in Uzbekistan. This was the capital of the Samanid empire. He was one of the most important interpreters of Aristotle, and he soon developed his own system of medicine.</p> <p>His most important discovery was learning that disease was contagious, and he introduced new methods like quarantine for controlling outbreaks.</p> <p>He was a prolific writer on all topics, and his book of medical discoveries, treatments, and cures known as the Canon of Medicine, was translated into Latin and remained a medical authority throughout the West into the 19th century.</p> <p>The book was a massive 14 volumes and combined medical knowledge from India, China, Greece, and Central Asia. Today Avicenna is considered to be the founder of modern medicine.</p> <p>Living at the same time as Avicenna, another great thinker made lasting contributions to science. His name was al-Biruni and he was born in Ghazni, in what is now Afghanistan.</p> <p>Among his many achievements, he accurately calculated latitudes and longitudes using complicated trigonometry.</p> <p>Throughout their lives, Avicenna and al-Biruni engaged in fierce debates with each other about the nature of the planets, their orbits, and the scientific method. The ideas that they developed were studied across the continent for centuries.</p> <p>During this time, science was not considered to be a separate pursuit from philosophy. Avicenna and al-Biruni explored questions about the physical world and the spiritual world at the same time and wrote extensively on issues of God, philosophy, anthropology, and history.</p> <p>In other words, they asked physical questions about why a town was flooded &ndash; but they also asked metaphysical questions about why a town was flooded.</p> <p>Scientific and philosophical inquiry continued to flourish across Asia and Europe, and new ideas were exchanged through the centuries with excitement and debate.</p> <p>It has only been in the last three hundred years that science and spiritual inquiry have separated from each other so drastically. Now, science defines itself as a purely non-spiritual pursuit.</p> <p>And that has meant that science and religion have become highly specialized, each with their own adherents and their own spheres of influence.</p>