English | ISBN: 1472447344 | 2018 | 460 pages | PDF | 5 MB

The title of this volume implies two things: the greatness of the scientific tradition that Muslims had lost, and the power of the West, in whose threatening shadow reformers now labored to modernize in order to defend themselves against those very powers they were taking as models. Copernicus and Darwin were the names that dominated the debate on science, whose arguments and rebuttals were published mainly in the religious and secular journals in Cairo and Beirut from the 1870s. Analysis and interpretation of this literature shows the hope that Arab reformers had of duplicating the Japanese success, followed by the despair when success was denied.
Read more