his experimental method with the mathematical abstraction of observed regularities. Crombie states in Augustine to Galileo (paperback Mercury Books, 1964) : “ Galilee combined. In all textbooks of the western world, the Italian physicist Galileo Galilee ( 1564–1642) is presented as the father of this scientific method. The light of stars located behind the Sun is bent by the mass of the Sun, and could be observed clearly. This hypothesis or deduction of his theory was tested in 1919, 1922, 19 during total eclipses of the Sun. Recall here that Einstein in his General Relativity (or Theory of Gravitation) predicted that light bends by a large mass of matter by its gravitation like any matter. In other words, an experiment is designed to test the hypothesis on which the mathematical theory is actually based. The two well known characteristics of the modern scientific method are the theory building and experimentation.While the former is actually a sort of mathematical modeling of observational facts, the latter is not only just observation of a phenomena experimentally, but also includes in it the experimental proof of a hypothesis In the sequel, I exemplify the main features of Ibn al-Haytham’s method as the design of experiment in order to test a hypothesis, and not using it just for observation or discovery as used by his predecessors.
Ibn al-Haytham’s Discourse on Light and tracts On the Light of Stars, On the Light of the Moon and On the Halo and the Rainbow are the main sources from which his working method can be deduced.
It deals, in seven volumes, with experimental and mathematical study of the properties of light. His most famous book in Arabic was on optics, Kitāb fī al-Manāẓir, in Latin Opticae Thesaurus, which was translated anonymously in the 12th /13th century. Moreover, his autobiographical sketch indicates clearly that he studied very thoroughly Aristotle’s (natural) philosophy, logic and metaphysics of which he gave a concise account. According to his own testimony, he wrote 25 works on mathematical sciences, 44 works on (Aristotelian) physics and metaphysics, also on meteorology and psychology. The Caliph was a great patron of scientist-scholars, he got built an observatory for the astronomer Ibn Yūnus (d.1009) and he founded a library Dār al–ʻIlm, whose fame almost equaled that of its precursor at Baghdad, Bayt al- Ḥikma(the House of Wisdom), established by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mā’mūn (reigned 813 – 833). He was one of the senior most member of the Muslim scholars’ trio during 10th -11th centuries, the other two were al-Bīrūnī (973-1048) and Ibn Sīnā (980–1037).įrom Basra, Ibn al- Haytham shifted to Cairo, where the Fatimid Caliph al-Ḥākim had invited him. Also known as Alhazen, this brilliant Arab scholar from the 10th – 11th century, made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astronomy and mathematics, and developed his own methodology: experimentation as another mode of proving the basic hypothesis or premise.Ībū Ali al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham al-Baṣrī (965-1040), known in European Middle Ages by the name of Alhazen, was called among Arab scholars as ‘Second Ptolemy’ (Baṭlamyūs Thānī). He was actually a scholar of many disciplines: Mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, philosophy and medicine. He was a forerunner to Galileo as a physicist, almost five centuries earlier, according to Prof.