Arabic Astronomy and the Copernican ‘Revolution’

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Notes

¹Stobaeus, ii. 1.23.

²This is a simplified outline of Ptolemy's ideas which, moreover, are differently expressed in his Almagest , Handy Tables , and Planetary Hypotheses .

³N.M. Swerdlow, O. Neugebauer, Mathematical astronomy in Copernicus's De revolutionibus, Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences 10 (New York, 1984).

⁴To mention just a few recent studies, see Peter Adamson, Al-Kindī, Great Medieval Thinkers (Oxford, 2006); and Peter E. Pormann, E. Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 2007); and for a critique of the idea of decline and fall, see Robert Wisnovsky, ‘The Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post-classical (ad c.1100–1900) Islamic Intellectual History: Some Preliminary Observations’, in P. Adamson, H. Baltussen and M.W.F. Stone (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries, Supplement to the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 83/1–2, 2 vols. (London, 2004), II,149–91; and for literature: Thomas Bauer, ‘In Search of “Post-Classical Literature”. A Review Article’, Mamlūk Studies Review 11 (2007), 137–67, esp. on p. 141. There has also been a proliferation of popular books of various quality reclaiming the medieval Muslim heritage; see, for instance, Salim T.S. Al-Hassani et al. (eds), 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World (London, 2006).

⁵Gerhard Endress, Proclus Arabus: zwanzig Abschnitte aus der Institutio theologica in arabischer Übersetzung, Beiruter Texte und Studien 10 (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft in Kommission bei F. Steiner, Wiesbaden, 1973); idem, ‘Die Entwicklung der Fachsprache’, in W. Fischer (ed.), Grundriß der Arabischen Philologie, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1992), III. 3–23; Manfred Ullmann, ‘ ibn Yazīd und die Alchemie: Eine Legende’, Der Islam 55 (1978), 181–218; idem., Manfred Ullmann, Wörterbuch zu den griechisch-arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 2002); Peter Adamson, The Arabic Plotinus: a Philosophical Study of the ‘Theology of Aristotle’ (London, 2002).

⁶Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and the Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton, NJ, 1987).

⁷Peter E. Pormann, ‘Parisinus Graecus 2293 as a Document of Scientific Activity in Swabian Sicily’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003), 137–61.

⁸Michele Amari, I diplomi arabi del R. archivio fiorentino (Florence, 1863); see also the recent Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni, tr. Deke Dusinberre (London, 2007).

⁹Gotthard Strohmaier, ‘Die angeblichen und die wirklichen orientalischen Quellen der Divina Commedia’, Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 68–9 (1993–4), 183–98, reprinted in idem., Von Demokrit bis Dante, Olms Studien 43 (Hildesheim, 1996) 471–86; Francesco Gabrieli, ‘Il Petrarca e gli Arabi’, Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medievale 7 (1965), 487–94; Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qurān in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Philadelphia, 2007).

¹⁰See now Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor, MI, 2007), 248–50; and Peter E. Pormann, ‘Ibn Sarābiyūn: [tdot]abīb alā muftaraq uruq al-[hdot]a[ddot]ārāt baina Š-Šarq wa-l-garb (Ibn Serapion: A Physician at the Crossroads of Cultures between East and West)’, al-MaŠriq 82.2 (2008), 343–59, on pp. 356–8.

¹¹See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd ed., Chicago, 1996); and, for instance, Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs Popper: the Struggle for the Soul of Science, Revolutions in Science (Cambridge, 2006).

¹²A case in point is fig. 6.6 on p. 206, corresponding to fig. 3 on. p. 255 of his 1994 book.

¹³Thus, many models mentioned in chapter three are explained in chapter four. Other examples of this type include ‘Ur[ddot]Ī's Lemma’, discussed at various points but only explained in chapter six on p. 202.