> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic

That crosses into some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar. Please don't. It leads to destructive dynamics that are just what we're trying to avoid here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic

If we navigate the flamewar this is still an interesting point.

"Essay on the Computation of Casting and Equation" at least was written in arabic. It was long long time ago but its impact is still noticeable.

What are they doing more recently? I can see femtochemistry, improving robots and inventing critical parts of the litium battery for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_Arab_scientists...

The discussion has been polite so far and it's not an unfair point.

Earlier in the 20th century, German was the language of engineering. Before that, French. Before that, Latin. Before that, something else. Languages and their significance in different fields wax and wane.

Yes, and things of importance happen in any of them.

I do not care about race. I care about the truth. Having said that, Arabic is not a race, it is a language. Multiple races use Arabic.

That's why I said "some sort of racial (or whatever) flamewar". There's a grey area between commenting on a language and slurring the people who use it, and you stepped into the latter, which is unacceptable here. Please don't do it again.

Almost all of science and philosophy was done in Arabic during the middle ages so "1.4k years" is an overestimate. Without the Arab and Muslim scholarship much of Greek/Roman wisdom would be lost.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_of_the_Greek_Cl...

> Without the Arab and Muslim scholarship much of Greek/Roman wisdom would be lost.

I've just been on a holiday in Venice and Florence, which made me question that standard wisdom, as I learnt more about Venice and Constantinople.

The most important effect of those texts, I guess, was the Italian Renaissance. Petrarch seems to have found his books by hunting through old piles in attics, and the Venetians got (looted?) theirs directly from the Byzantines. It isn't clear to me that the Arabs had a major role.

The Spanish got their classical books from the Moors. But what did they do with those books, and why does that matter?

> The Spanish got their classical books from the Moors. But what did they do with those books, and why does that matter?

Arguably, had a huge affect in kicking off the Renaissance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_School_of_Translators

Venice, certainly, had significant ties to Constantinople, most notably looting the hell out of it in the 4th Crusade in the 1200s.

Both "Zero" and "Cipher" come from the same Arabic word "ṣifr" and whenever I remember that, I tell whoever's near me.

Yup cipher comes from sifr which is arabic for zero.

Islamic/arabic world could not keep up with the science, unfortunately.

Let's not go into religious or racial flamewar, please.

As a muslim myself, this is not a religion war. It simply is the case. There is no reasonable budget for science in most/all of muslim dominant countries, and the budget that exists is not used effectively. Private sector support for technology is very limited, and medical research especially genetic research is very limited.

I wish this was not the case.

I do not care who produces the science, we all are one and the same. Science benefits all.

Imagine if during the height of the Greek golden age most of the largest cities were razed to the ground and their populations systematically exterminated. That means Athens as we knew it would have been reduced to rubble.

That's what happened during the Mongol Conquests. The fall of Baghdad alone caused at least several hundred thousand people to be killed. The main library, which had collected countless works over the centuries, was gone.

Baghdad was rebuilt, of course. Economically and politically it bounced back since it was still right on the silk road. But scientific study never really recovered there.

One might, on the other hand, wonder what might have happened if the Mongols hadn't been infected by Islamic schism and dynastic troubles and completed their push through into Mamluk Egypt. As pivotal as Ayn Jalut was, the groundwork for that failure was laid in the religious conversion of [1]Berke and the Golden Horde to Islam.

[1] Initially listed his brother Batu, rather than Berke, the first Muslim Khan.

Very true! Egypt was able to continue mostly unscathed. Perhaps this indicates that the Arab golden age was in its twilight? Maybe the Mamluks didn't invest in the sciences as much as the Fatimids?

And even further west Andalusia was still chugging along. That was definitely an important source of knowledge for the first universities in the rest of Europe.

I am hoping israel is giving the kick the region needs in terms of scientific progress. They are kicking ass, pushing boundaries. For them, it might have more reasons beyond scientific curiosity and capitalism, it might also be existential.

Definitely. Iran already has more in publications in total than Israel, although they're still way behind when looking at the per capita number. Hopefully this trend continues.

Those "muslim" scholars were mostly not arab,, and were constantly being accused for heresy. It is smart people that produce science and not Islam. The only science Islam has produced is the magical benefits of drinking camel urine and Hijama. No thanks.

Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how another commenter is behaving. That only makes this place worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1.4K years is certainly an overestimate. 150 years maybe a better timeframe since the Industrial revolution started going in full swing.

But your same logic applies to any non major Western European language too. But past 150 years -> don't think any major scientific discovery was done in the Japanese/Korean/Chinese language. All of them was first written down and communicated and published first in the English language.

Not quite - the academic world wasn't Arabic up until the industrial revolution.

The height of Arabic intellectualism was short lived, basically the early middle ages, not even into the Renaissance, let alone the enlightenment.

However PC it is or not - it's true that not much has been done in the Arab world for a long time, say 700 years. Muslim Golden Age: "This period is traditionally said to have ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 AD" from Wikipedia.

Up until 1950, something like 5% of the Arab world was literate. Very sparse population, very little industry. Without Oil ... most of us would know nothing about 'Arab' - it'd be on our radar as much as Morocco is today (a nominally Arab country without Oil) which is to say not at all. Basically not hugely important to us.

"English won the game because bits and bytes were invented in English"

English as the dominant language in Science is a new thing, just 100 years ago it was German.

Whether new or not, Computers speak English. Game over for German/French/All others.

Computers speak binary, not English - and computer code has almost nothing to do with Anglo dominance.

Have a look at a map.

Computers speak voltage, not binary. Come on. Do you write software using binary ? Technology speaks English.

In theory, you can invent the wheel and use Arabic for programming. Good luck finding resources and finding users who are willing to use your new programming language that uses Arabic alphabet and use your Arabic javadoc.

Using multiple languages to achieve the same goal is stupid. Pure overhead. English dominates the world, end of story.

Mais les ordinateurs parlent français !

The Arab golden age was very important.

I am also unclear what you mean by "especially". Are you saying that there was actually more scientific output in Arabic before 1400 years ago?

Calling it the Arab Golden Age is pushing it. It was a Golden Age of the Islamic world but the high culture, science and philosophy was often communicated in Persian and most of the great thinkers we remember were not Arabs.

The ghazal begs to disagree.

The ghazal is a poetic form, not science. Not saying I agree with GP, but this isn't a rebuttal.

OP didn't write what you seem to have read.

> nothing with importance is being produced in Arabic, especially in the last 1.4k years.

Poetry is important.