Islam Creator of the Modern Age
2. Holding Sacred that which is not Sacred
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barred the way to such activity. Jabir ibn Hayyan
(d. 817), however, understanding the importance of
observation, used findings based thereon in his
scientific studies, the written accounts of which
were transmitted to Europe in translations.
Thinking went on developing along these lines until
it formed the basis for experimental science as it is
known today.
The first person in history to advance the theory
of inertia in material bodies was Ali Hasan ibn al-
Haysam (d. 1021). This discovery reached Europe,
where scholars subjected it to further scrutiny. It
was formulated much later, as Newton’s law of
motion, namely, that every body continues in its
state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line,
except in so far as it is compelled by external
forces to change that state. Then again it was ibn
Haysam who originally discovered that the path
taken by a ray of light or other wave motion in
traversing the distance between any two points is
such that the time taken is a minimum. This
discovery later became known as Fermat’s
principle of least time.
