The mainstream literary-history paradigm, however, has tended to present the evolution of social thought as one straight line of events, moving almost entirely across the Western world, as if denying history to the rest of the world. Thus, one observes a literature gap in discussions of medieval history of the West. This gap encompasses just about every discipline (see Ghazanfar, 1991). A very large part of the period includes the multi-dimensional development of Arab-Islamic thought. During this period, Islamic scholarship not only absorbed and adapted the rediscovered Greek heritage but also transmitted that heritage, along with its own contributions, to Latin-Europe. Thus was provided the stimulus for developing the human intellect further, for conveying a mold for shaping Western scholasticism, for developing empirical sciences and the scientific method, for bringing about the forces of rationalism and humanism that led to the twelfth century Medieval Renaissance, the fifteenth century Italian Renaissance, and indeed, for sowing the seeds of European Reformation (see Dawson, Gilson, Haskins, Makdisi, Sarton, Southern and others).
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:25:14 +0000
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