[FRIAM] Islamic Enlightenment?

[Jochen Fromm]

The European Renaissance was enabled by refugees from Constantinople too. Constantinople preserved the heritage and knowledge of the Roman Empire. When Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453, many Byzantine scholars fled to the West, for instance to Venice and Florence, and contributed to the Renaissance.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_scholars_in_the_Renaissance The Ottoman Empire prohibited the printing press (partially because calligraphers felt threatened) which contributed to the decline of the Islamic world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_press-J.
-------- Original message --------From: Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> Date: 9/11/21  01:20  (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Islamic Enlightenment? I think you can make the case that Islamic people partly enabled the European Renaissance.  There was a library in Alhambra (?) that preserved original Greek and Christian writings.  I wonder if they were copied by hand in order to make them more widely available.---Frank C. Wimberly140 Calle Ojo Feliz, Santa Fe, NM 87505505 670-9918Santa Fe, NMOn Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 5:04 PM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:Yeah, I thought that, too. But either way, this is the only recent article I've found that talks about how the enlightenment isn't a Western Exceptionalist thing. I've heard some black radicals claim that several other cultures have had something similar at other times and to other extents. But I'm not well read enough to know where, when, who, etc.


On 9/10/21 3:58 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> It seems somewhat limiting to, even partially, equate 'enlightenment' with critical philosophy as this article does. The efflorescence of ideas, of sciences (especially astronomy, math, and medicine), and arts that occurred in the Islamic world long before the European Renaissance would seem a better foundation to conclude that Islam was already enlightened during (and before) the European Middle Ages.
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 10, 2021, at 2:26 PM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
>>
>> Are Islamic philosophers critical of authority?
>> https://www.newstatesman.com/international/2021/09/are-islamic-philosophers-critical-authority
>>
>> "All this sheds an interesting light on a frequently asked question, 
>> which is why the Islamic world never experienced something like the 
>> European Enlightenment. Of course, that's a complicated issue. But part 
>> of the answer might simply be this: to the extent that 'enlightenment' 
>> involves the emergence of intellectuals who step back from the typical 
>> views of their society, and critically evaluate prevailing religious 
>> and philosophical ideas, the Islamic world was already 'enlightened' 
>> during the European Middle Ages."


-- 
☤>$ uǝlƃ

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