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Archive 1Archive 2

Out of Scope and Duplication

Note: The Chinese and Indian material has been removed since by consensus. This leaves the question whether the Islamic world section should be kept or removed, too. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 09:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I added the template to the Chinese, Indian and Islamic sections. The two questions most central to the discussion which need to be addressed are

  • A. Scope: What is the range of material that belongs in an article on medieval Science and what is out of WP:Scope here. More precisely, which traditions/world regions should be covered here, and which should be covered elsewhere.
  • B. Duplication: Closely related with A. If the inclusion of certain other non-European traditions is judged worth of being included here despite A., contents should still not be duplicated.

My view:

  • A. The scope of an article about the Science in the Middle Ages are the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are, as the WP article explains, "a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century". This excludes completely the Chinese and Indian parts and also Islam as far as it is not directly interrelated with European developments. And this is also reflected in the template: The header of "The Middle Ages" template at the bottom of this article subsumes Science in the Middle Ages under a number of articles which exclusively deal with the "Middle Ages". And in fact all these articles, with a sole exception, deal only with Medieval European History. So why should we make an exception just for sciences?
Taken from another angle: History of science and technology in China deals and deals only with the history of Chinese science, History of Indian science and technology deals and deals only with the history of Indian science and Science in medieval Islam deals and deals only with the history of medieval Muslim science: each topic has an article of its own. So why should the history of the European medieval be alone in not having an article of its own where it is covered exclusively? Why introducing a double standard? I believe my point is straightforward enough.
  • B. Duplication: This leads me to the second point. The current Islamic section (and no less the Chinese and Indian material) are duplications from the articles cited above. Copied and pasted (and the Islamic part is in my view misrepresented beyond repair). Therefore, if we were to include the Islamic bits despite A., we would not only violate the scope of the Middle Ages as defined in Wikipedia, we would also do this by simply reproducing material one click away.

My vote: Remove the Chinese, Indian and Islamic sections (as well as "major accomplishments"). Keep Islamic material only in sofar as it directly relates to the European Middle Ages, that is it had a direct impact on medieval thinking. This is the way all articles in the template are organized. And, frankly, the way Wikipedia has defined the Middle Ages and organized the subject, anything else would amount to a 'special solution' tailor-made for the subject of science. One subject, one article. Voilà. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 09:42, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'll move in the version I've been working on in my userpage (which removes the Chinese and Indian sections and the major accomplishments) so we have a basis for editing. In Islam we should look carefully to see that we're deleting true overlaps. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:12, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The influence of Islamic Science on the European science in the Middle Ages is very intensive an complex from the 12th till the 16th century so although I agree that the Islamic section here is desperately in need of revision it will and must still remain rather substantial.Thony C. (talk) 14:55, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree, we have to be careful not to downplay Islamic influence in Medieval Western Europe; it is unmistakable in the history of early medieval astronomy. You first see Islamic influence with the transmission of astronomical instruments (the astrolabe), for which there is one ninth century exemplar, and Latin scholars who were influenced by ideas from the Islamic world from the tenth and eleventh centuries, e.g., John of Gorze, Walcher of Malvern and Gerbert of Aurillac. That being said, the Europeans who sought ought the knowledge of the Islamic world were historical actors, not just passive recipients, and the article needs to treat them as such. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with what you say but it is not only in astronomy. The mediaeval reception of Aristotle is totally coloured by Arabic sources and commentators, the same goes for medicine; the influence of Islamic mathematic, in particular trigonometry and algebra, is enormous. However as you say we need to give emphasis to the translators and commentators who introduced the Greek/Arabic and Arabic science into Europe.Thony C. (talk) 15:36, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Nice comment on the other sciences. It's not just the translators and commentators, however. The three examples I mentioned (and others I could have) are western scholars who sought out and used Arabic astronomy. In fact, the people who first used Arabic material preceded the wave of translations. If you want more detail, see chapter 9 on "The encounter of Arabic and Latin astronomies" in my Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:49, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

An often consulted volume on my bookshelf Thony C. (talk) 17:26, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

David Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science (1992) displays similar proportions, although some reviews of the book took him to task for reducing the role of Islam to that of transmitting Greek science to the West.

In the second revised edition from 2007 Lindberg writes in the preface: "The chapter on Islamic science has been entirely rewritten - altered in both substance and presentation, to reveal the magnitude and sophistication of the medieval Islamic scientific achievement."Thony C. (talk) 19:14, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Although I am the one who contributed the Chinese section a while back, I do think GunPowderMa's point made here is entirely valid, i.e. Western Europe needs its own science article and moreover, the term Middle Ages should apply to Europe only. I support the removal and restructuring.--Pericles of AthensTalk 22:55, 19 August 2010 (UTC)
Middle Ages has no relevance in a Chinese context so I'm for the removal and restructuring. Philg88 contact 15:51, 25 December 2024 UTC [refresh]
Notified the two portals above so that we can get more input. Regards Gun Powder Ma (talk) 09:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:07, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Notified the two projects (where is the difference anyway?) since there seems to be much more activity. Also notified user who have shown an interest in the topic in the past at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85 save those here who merely discussed related technicalities, not at all contents. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:33, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Islamic world

This section must stay. Over 100% of the content must be replaced but the section must stay. (Balance would call for "Christendom" to be the other section but I don't think its necessary.) Its not what they did with "Greek" science that's important its that they did anything at all with it. Bacon would write that to be a scientist you had to know Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic (this comes to wikipedia as "you had to know Arabic"). I would like to get this section in shape and have the "Islamic science" page redirect here. We cannot balance all of Jagged edits by deletion but must replace some with responsible, balanced info. This would be a good place to start. J8079s (talk) 16:41, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

You failed to address my arguments. Both, in fact. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 08:17, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
GPM, I'm not quite clear on your two arguments, but here's a try at restating them and some comments:
  1. Islamic science is not part of medieval science and should be deleted. (Since most histories of medieval science do not take this approach, I will argue against it).
  2. The section on Islamic science is so severely flawed (Jaggedized) that it should be deleted. (I agree that it is severely flawed but that calls for improving rather than deleting the section).
If I've misunderstood your arguments, please restate them below--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:42, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
Briefly, but now in bold: The scope of an article about the Science in the Middle Ages are, obviously, the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are, as the WP article explains, "a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century". This excludes Islam. And this is also reflected in the template: The header of "The Middle Ages" template at the bottom of this article subsumes Science in the Middle Ages under a number of articles which exclusively deal with the "Middle Ages", that is the Christian European Middle Ages. For Muslim science there is already the article Science in medieval Islam. Hence, there is no reason to deal with it here at length and to duplicate contents. Therefore: Keep Islamic material only as far as it is not directly interrelated with European developments. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 18:26, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

You can divide the Middle ages into two parts the early Middle Ages from about 500 CE to 1000 CE and the rest till about 1450 CE. With no offence to Steve, who is one of the experts for science in the Early Middle Ages, there was in the first period very little real science. In the second period the transmission, assimilation and development of Islamic science and the Islamic forms of Greek science constitute something between 50 and 80% of all the scientific activity. If you choose to eliminate Islamic science from this article you eliminate science from this article which for an article on the history of science would be fairly stupid.Thony C. (talk) 19:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

The Islamic section should be modified to reflex the role that Islamic science played in mediaeval European science but should without question remainThony C. (talk) 11:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Hello everyone. In my opinion, there are three big problems here:
- Things the muslims never did (blatantly false statements) with sources that do not back them up( typical of Jagged)
- Partially true statements ( things the muslims did, but they were not the first at all, as the section says). It´s really hard to find something the muslims did that was not done (in one way or another) before by the greeks, hindus or chinese.
- True statements, but written in a pompous, unacceptable fashion for an ecyclopedia. Saying the muslims laid the fundations for agrucultural science is simply ridiculous.
Given the circumstances, I only agree with keeping the section if we get to rewrite as soon as possible( I know this may sound , eliminating the bad stuff (false statements, bad quality sources and Jagged´s presentism) and keeping the good ( no matter how small that may be). And of course, we should improve the level of the medieval of the western european and bizantine sections. 75% of the bizantine section is dedicated to islamic influences ( which indeed existed, but the islamic sections curiously forgets to mention bizantine influences). But I´ll make it clear that, if necessary, I don´t have any problem with deleting the whole section. Drastic Times Call For Drastic Measures.--Knight1993 (talk) 17:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
From the talk page, it seems that arguments about the scope of this page have been going on since 2007. Our other articles on the middle ages (e.g., those in {{Middle Ages_wide_2}}) generally focus almost exclusively on Europe, so I think that should be the subject of this article as well, as suggested by the Eurocentric Middle Ages. Of course, we have to discuss Arabic/Islamic science because of its immense influence, but I would prefer to do so in situ, in connection with its transmission to the West, rather than in a separate section. Overviews of Islamic science should I think be at Science in medieval Islam (that title is also Eurocentric—a more accurate but more unwieldy title would be Science in the pre-modern Islamic world.) A few sentences in the lead of this article explaining the Arabic/Islamic influence might also be useful.
I realize that Science in medieval Islam suffers extensively from this problem, but redirection here is not the solution because this topic is so important. Spacepotato (talk) 19:36, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

consensus Keep with heavy handed editing and integration into the mainstream. I'm going out of town for a bit this book might help you guys. Crombie, Alistair Cameron (1990). Science, optics, and music in medieval and early modern thought. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 9780907628798. Retrieved 22 August 2010. BE BOLD J8079s (talk) 02:16, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I actually agree with Gun Powder Ma. The term "Middle Ages" strictly applies to Europe, and there already exists a separate Science in medieval Islam. Perhaps we could rename this article to "Science in medieval Europe"? Would that work? While I feel that a section on the influence of Islamic science on medieval European science is indeed necessary (perhaps at the beginning of the article?), that is quite different from having a fully developed Islamic section here. Not to mention that such a section is a content fork of Science in medieval Islam. So here's what I propose: Remove the current hopelessly Jaggedized version of the Islamic section, replace it with an "Islamic influence" section at the beginning of the article, and rename the article to "Science in Medieval Europe". Athenean (talk) 07:48, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Replacement with a Islamic influence section is what is desirable but it should be placed between the early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages which is where it belongs chronologically.That which distinguishes the High Middle Ages from the Early Middle Ages is the transmission of Islamic knowledge. As the Middle ages only took place in Europe I find your proposed title tautologous.Thony C. (talk) 08:09, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

To be clear as possible, this article should be renamed "Science in medieval Europe". Then we can remove (or move or whatever) those sections of science in Islam that aren't directly relevant to Europe.--Cúchullain t/c 14:10, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
An article named Science in Medieval Western Europe does exist; it was forked off from this article in April 2008 with the intention that it would handle the details and Science in the Middle Ages would be the generic summary article. The change never caught on and most of the editing remained in the more familiar Science in the Middle Ages. See the discussion above #What to do with "Science in Medieval Western Europe" which addresses this in greater detail. Comments there would be welcome.—Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveMcCluskey (talk • contribs) 17:56, 22 August 2010
So I see. Well, we certainly don't need two articles that cover the same thing, as they will if the Islam material is moved from this article, which seems to be the direction consensus is leaning. If we do that, simply adding "Europe" to the title will clear up any possible confusion over the scope.--Cúchullain t/c 20:32, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The consensus is not leaning towards the removal of the Islamic material but towards rewriting it! In answer to Steve the Science in MWE article should simple be removed as it only contains duplicates of material contained here. J8079s the book you are planing on buying is a collection of Crombie's essays. Crombie is an excellent historian but you should be aware that he is pushing a personal agenda that is no longer accepted in mainstream history of science. Crombie is the strongest defender of the thesis that the Scientific Revolution took place in the High Middle Ages and not in the 17th century. Whilst his work helped to radically change the picture of science in the Middle Ages his central thesis is, as already said, not acceptedThony C. (talk) 21:00, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Thorny, I don't see your point. If there was indeed "very little real science" in the early medieval period, then the article should say so, and do not try to 'remedy' this gap by lengthy digressions into foreign Islamic science. And when you argue that "50 and 80% of all the scientific activity" even of the later Middle Ages consisted of the reception of Arab science, then you seem to completely ignore that no less than 100% of early Islamic scientific activity originates in its Greek foundations. Still, I don't see Greek science dominating the article on Science in medieval Islam, do you?
If this is your only argument which addresses my two specific concerns, namely that 1. WP consensus is clearly that Middle Ages = European Christian Medieval World, and 2. there exists already a separate article for Science in medieval Islam which makes a duplication of contents here undesirable, I have to say, it is a rather weak counterargument, based on your personal reading of the history of medieval science. So could you address my two points again, please? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:11, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
(after edit conflict)
A central issue in the discussions of medieval science (and particularly of early medieval science) is the extent to which a history of science should focus on scientific change, especially the revolutionary science described by Kuhn, and the extent to which it should focus on the other side of science, that "normal science" which he considered complementary to it. Once we turn away from a focus on scientific revolutions, we begin to see a hell of a lot of science going on in unexpected times and places. It's on that distinction that I'd disagree with claims that "very little real science" took place in the Middle Ages; understanding what continued to go on in the Early Middle Ages (as well as what was going on in the Later Middle Ages) is essential if we're going to have a valid history of Western Science.
Interestingly, it's because they buy into the commonly held assertion that nothing was going on in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages that Jagged, et al. can make the claim that Islam was the sole source of Western European Science. See, for example, this piece at Muslim Heritage.com, especially Figs. 5a and 5b, where the author proposes to replace the non-existent (even negative) science of the "Dark Ages" with the positive achievements of Islam and (to a lesser extent, China and India). This very well matches an editorial agenda with which many of us are all too familiar.
Of course, I'm not saying that the Islamic contribution was non-existent, and any article on medieval science has to deal with that influence. But in the area with which I'm most familiar, the history of astronomy, in the eighth and early ninth centuries there was little difference between the level of Western European and Islamic astronomy. In the ninth century Islam took off, while Western Europe plodded along, only catching up in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But the notion that nothing was going on in the West is the result of an equation of science with scientific change. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:51, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
@Thorny: That's what I meant; rewriting the material so that only stuff directly relevant to Europe is included. In any case, the agreement seems to be that the article should center on Europe; changing the title accordingly would make the scope clear.--Cúchullain t/c 21:56, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
@Steve: Well put. I think we're all too familiar with this kind of ideological turf war.--Cúchullain t/c 21:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I decided to try to get some empirical data on whether Medieval studies excludes the Islamic world. The ideal place to go was the catalog of the 1500+ papers offered at the 2010 International Congress on Medieval Studies, known generally as the Kalamazoo meeting. At first glance, the papers are overwhelmingly European, extending from the medieval Rus to Iberia, from Ireland to the Crusader states. In two of those, we're at the borders of the Islamic world.
A search for relevant strings: Arab, Islam, Muslim turned up a small number of papers devoted to things like Session 178 consisting of four papers on "Medieval Muslim Women"; A paper on Persian manuscript painting in Session 55 on "Feminist Approaches to Medieval Art: Islam, Byzantium, and the West"; two papers on "New Perspectives on Medieval Islamic Studies, I & II" in session 516 on "The State of the Arts in Medieval Studies." I won't go into the papers on Western perceptions of and interactions with the Islamic world that also appear in the program.
The picture seems to be that professional medievalists do not pay a lot of attention to the Islamic world, but neither do they exclude it from consideration. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:09, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
Once you get to the crusading world, Islam is definitely part of the Middle Ages. You can peruse this year's Crusade Symposium papers; they are still largely European, but there is a bit more study of Muslim Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East as far east as Persia. Medievalists largely pay attention to whatever are they studied, of course...I don't know anything about the Norse or Irish world, but I bet most of the participants at Norsestock don't know much about the crusader states either. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:34, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Article name

There have been suggestions, by Athenean and Cúchullain, to rename the article "Science in medieval Europe" to sufficiently distinguish its scope and contents from, inter alia, Science in medieval Islam. Why don't we just rename it to Medieval science? This is also the naming scheme for almost all the other articles in the Middle Ages series:

the only exception being Slavery in medieval Europe. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:35, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The difference between this article and those, most of which aren't very good, is that in this case there is a debate over the scope of the article. If we're actually going to confine the scope to Europe, and deal with Islam only as it affects Europe, then adding "Europe" to the title makes the scope clear in a way that "Science in the Middle Ages" simply does not.--Cúchullain t/c 21:48, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Another relevant point is that the History of Science sidebar divides science chronologically and, at present, has only one main article for medieval science. The sidebar currently lists no separate articles for Islamic, Chinese, and Indian science. I've submitted a proposal to change that, but it reflects a fairly standard perception in the History of Science community. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:58, 22 August 2010 (UTC)


Steve, this may be a point indeed. A typical example where two organization principles, that of the medieval series and that of the history of science series, intersect and and come into conflict with one another.
Cúchullain, a bit too procedural for my taste: obviously, all arguments forwarded here for and against the identification of "medieval" also apply just as fully to the articles listed above. Still the "medieval" has not been found to be contentious by the community in any of these twelve articles. Therefore it is very hard to see why this should be the case all of a sudden with the science article alone. Either the naming scheme works for all articles or for none. Note that I do not feel very strongly about a name change, I am just trying to bring in more consistency in the naming scheme. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 22:27, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Obviously it's something that would affect other articles, this is just the first article where disagreement of the scope has come up. And I'm willing to bet it will come up again, as Europe does not totally corner the market on the term "medieval" or even "Middle Ages". It is fairly common for sources to refer to "medieval Islam", and even to "medieval India" (especially in terms of the Islamic conquest of India).--Cúchullain t/c 15:19, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
My bad, it appears that the issue of the inclusion of non-European material has occurred at some of the other articles as well, including medieval philosophy and medieval art. --Cúchullain t/c 15:35, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
(undent) Comment: I'll just state this and withdraw from the conversation (I don't feel like getting into another battle). There is a larger issue here than just this article and I agree that this article should be consistent with other articles related to Medieval studes. But we need to bear in mind that the origin of using the term medieval to refer primarily to Europe is rooted in the old prejudicial notion that the only important things in human history occurred in Europe. We now know obviously that this is not true. Though medieval is primarily more often than not used to refer to Europe, this use is not universal today (some authors even go so far as to discuss China in the "Middle Ages"). I would advocate Wikipedia's trying to steer away from the controversial use of period terms to define geographies. That is to say, unless a period term explicitly indicates a geography (e.g. Vedic period or Ming dynasty as suggested above), or that period term is almost universally used to refer to a well-defined geography, we should not assume such terms refer to any specific geography. Either we should add the geography to the title along with that period term or we should use different terminology altogether. In the case of medieval and Middle Ages I think it is just as easy to say medieval Europe and Europe in the Middle Ages. --Mcorazao (talk) 15:15, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
If the term Middle Ages would apply just as fully to, say, India and China, the question immediately rises 'middle between what'? For Europe and the Med one say say 'middle in between antiquity and the modern age', but what does Middle Ages mean in a Chinese context? In between Tang and Ming dynasties? In an Indian context? Middle between Gupta and Moghul dynasties? The term rapidly loses its meaning if applied to these world regions. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 18:41, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
It is precisely to avoid this sort of argument over and over that I propose the article be renamed to "Science in Medieval Europe" or something like that. Unless the word "Europe" is included, we will continuously get complaints of the type "What about India and China", "The article is Eurocentric", "The article does not present a worldview" and so on and so forth ad infinitum. If the word Europe is included, we can all go about our business. Athenean (talk) 19:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Quite so. The terms are well established at least in Islamic and Indian studies, whether or not it seems to make logical sense. The term isn't really all that sensible in the European sense either; there is no firm date when Antiquity ended and the Middle Ages began, or when the Middle Ages ended and the modern era began. "Medieval Islam" is generally used as in Europe. I have a book on my shelf, J. J. Saunders History of Medieval Islam, which covers roughly the era from the time of Muhammad to the fall of Baghdad in the 13th century. Gustave E. von Grunebaum's Medieval Islam discusses the period between the rise of Islam and the "close of the Middle Ages". What constitutes "Medieval India" is also much discussed.--Cúchullain t/c 19:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal to rename this article to "Science in Medieval Europe", which would address some of the arguments over scope discussed here. Dialectric (talk) 19:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
Sounds like a consensus is developing around Science in Medieval Europe. Is the implication that the fork, Science in Medieval Western Europe should be deleted? Since it's a less current version of the same article, I'd say delete it. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 23:51, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I wont oppose a renaming although I find it superfluousThony C. (talk) 06:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I think we should be wary of excluding Islamic influences (including those of science) from Europe at any time in history following the expansion of Islam, including the Middle ages. It is not appropriate to just quarantine part of the world especially along religious or ethnic lines when looking at either the history of science in Europe, or the history of science in the Middle ages. It must be considered that Islam had great influence over many parts of the European land mass during the Middle ages in Europe. Parts of Europe both in the south and the north were under very strong Islamic influence and control during the Middle ages. Science in Medieval Europe cannot exclude Islamic influence when large parts of Europe were at times part of a wider 'Islamic empire' during those times.
Possibly there exists a desire to view Islam as being non-european and seeing Europe as a place of Christianity. It must not be overlooked that in a European context both Christianity and Islam are imports from the Middle east. It must also be considered that 'science' does not just thrive solely in religious or ethnic compartments. Influences and knowledge can be transported or leak across religious, political, ethnic and national borders including those of a greater empire be it Christian, Muslim or and other. Indeed this debate itself underlines some of the contemporary issues that face majority Christian communities in Europe. There appears to be a reluctance to accept Islam as having a place in Europe, indeed to view it as foreign. This mindset can give rise to a paradigm where it is not considered appropriate by some to acknowledge the considerable Islamic influence in European history. It appears in reading some articles on WP that there is a conscious or maybe it is a sub-conscious effort by some editors to 'exclude' Islamic influences and history from European history other than to view them as 'the other' who invaded but were driven off. This may in part explain the considerable exuberance that some other WP editors apply to according Islam a place in European history. In the case of this article there is a clear need for the influences of the Islamic world to be considered when offering explanation of 'Science in the Middle ages' whether it be in a European or a Global context.
Surely if this is an article on "Science in the Middle Ages" then it should be about 'science' not religion. Scientific discovery, influences and development in the Middle ages needs to be properly attributed to those who contributed to it in spite of their religion not because of their religion. However if religious influences or movements gave rise to scientific discovery or the support of science as a discipline then that also needs to be defined and properly described along with defining the disciplines, the achievements and the scientific movements that arose from this. If we are to define the Middle ages as "European" it is still not appropriate to exclude Islam from this as Islam was an integral part of scientific discover and development in Medieval Europe (a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century).
If this article is heading in the direction of supporting old prejudicial notions that the only important things in human history occurred in Europe and that Europe was and is a Christian realm then that notion has no place in an encyclopaedic article other than one discussing that issue itself. It is apparent this matter was not entirely settled during the Crusades and some issues are lingering on with some people. It may be more appropriate for the motivations and lingering issues behind these views and issues to be expressed on one of the many blogs and internet forums that enthusiastically discuss such matters. Equally If scholars of Islam wish to appropriate science and write it up as an Islamic event then they also need to think harder.
The contributions of Islamic scholars and scientists are often ignored or sidelined in both the English speaking and the modern European world and this may explain the level of enthusiasm shown by some to reinstate the record of Islamic influences in the 'western' historical record. This article is very messy in it's current form. The article has lost it's way and certainly needs a massive re-stucture. The Islamic world section is overbearing in the article and the content needs to be refocussed on the topic of Science in the Middle Ages and more appropriately re-incorported into the body of the article. We do need to include Islamic civilization and empire in describing Science in the Middle Ages, regardless of any consideration of the Middle Ages being defined as European or otherwise.
  • For example if we present Astronomy and mathematics the section should discuss that subject and include the contributions of science from all quarters including Islamic scholars, links to Main articles: Islamic astronomy and Islamic mathematics, See also: Maragheh observatory would then be included in the text to properly elaborate on the contribution from these quarters. Renaming to Medieval science does not adequately refocus the article on scientific discovery in Christian Europe in the middle ages if that is the aim here, as Medieval science of Christain Europe is unquestionably influenced by Islamic civilisation and empire of the era.
Renaming the article will not fix the problem, the article needs to be re-formatted and re-structured and the content better applied using WP links to describe things in more detail when appropriate.
Maybe we just have to accept that Islam has a place in the historical record of Europe and get on with it.
As with Pizza, if you look into it sometimes what you are biting into has a history from other quarters of the world than that to which it is most commonly attributed (in that case very likely Persia and most certainly predates both Islam and Christianity in an era when Sun gods and Moon gods shared the stage with quite a few other alternatives).
I would fully agree with you, if we were going to actually discuss Islam fully in the article. However it appears we are only going to include Islamic material as it directly relates to Europe. If we're going to focus specifically on Europe, we need to say so in the title.--Cúchullain t/c 19:30, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Indeed if what is being sought in the article is a 'Eurpoean' focus then it does need to have that described in the name. Then indeed we are only going to need to include Islamic material as it directly relates to Europe, at that time ( the middle ages). That may then assist, certainly it is a bit messy in it's present form. Felix505 (talk) 20:52, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
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