User:William M. Connolley/Sandbox

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Katz: a history of mathematics
Katz, in A history of mathematics says that

"A complete history of mathematics of medieval Islam cannot yet be written, since so many of these Arabic manuscripts lie unstudied... Still, the general outline... is known. In particular, Islamic mathematicians fully developed the decimal place-value number system to include decimal fractions, systematised the study of algebra and began to consider the relationship between algebra and geometry, studied and made advances on the major Gfreek geometrical treatises of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius, and made significant improvements in plane and spherical geometry"

Major figures and developments

 * Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (c. 780 – c. 850)
 * 'Abd al-Hamīd ibn Turk (fl. 830) (quadratics)
 * Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901)
 * Abū Kāmil Shujā ibn Aslam (c. 850 – 930) (irrationals)
 * Abū Sahl al-Qūhī (c. 940–1000) (centers of gravity)
 * Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi (952 – 953) (arithmetic)
 * 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Qabisi
 * Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī (940 - 998) (spherical trigonometry)
 * Al-Karaji (c. 953 – c. 1029) (algebra, induction)
 * Abu Nasr Mansur (c. 960 – 1036) (spherical trigonometry)
 * Ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi (c. 980–1037) (irrationals)
 * Ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965–1040)
 * Abū al-Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (973 - 1048) (trigonometry)
 * Al-Khayyam (1048 - 1131) (cubic equations, parallel postulate)
 * Ibn Yaḥyā al-Maghribī al-Samawʾal (c. 1130 – c. 1180)
 * Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (c. 1150 – 1215) (cubics)
 * Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201 - 1274) (parallel postulate)
 * Jamshīd al-Kāshī (c. 1380 - 1429) (decimals)

A History of Western Philosophy
Russell in A History of Western Philosophy, states that:

"Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are essentially commentators. Speaking generally the views of the more scientific philosophers come from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists in logic and metaphysics, from galen in medicine, from Greek and Indian sources in mathematics and astronomy, and among mystics religious philosophy has also an admixture of old Persian beliefs. Writers in Arabic showed some originality in mathematics and chemistry - in the latter case, as an incidental result of alchemical researches. Mohammedan civilisation in its great days was admirable in the arts and in many technical ways but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. Its importance which must not be underrated, is as a transmitter (p 420)"