Notice here how Islamic religious beliefs support the pursuit of Greek/Roman philosophy/natural science -- in part because the sacred scripture of Islam, the Koran, plays a different role than it sometimes plays in especially later Christianity.
There is here not only the Muslim project of preserving and expanding the Greco-Roman inheritance of philosophy/natural science: there is the further, more fundamental influence as Muslim attitudes towards the relationship between religion and philosophy/natural science prefigure early Medieval attitudes necessary for the continued development of philosophy/natural science - i.e., the belief in their complementary relationship, as first articulated in the early Middle Ages by the Francis and the Franciscans.
Note the religious assumption behind Islamic science: "There is a natural hierarchy of knowledge from the physics of matter to the metaphysics of cosmological speculation, yet all knowledge terminates in the Divine. All phenomena are creations of Allah, His theophanies, and nature is a vast unity to be studied by believers as the visible sign of the Godhead. Nature is like an oasis in the bleak solitude of the desert; the tiny blades of grass as well as the most magnificent flowers bespeak of the gardener's loving hand. All nature is such a garden, the cosmic garden of God. Its study is a sacred act." (114f.)
Again, there is at the basis
of Islamic religion "the fundamental concept of nature's
unity and the absolute oneness of God...." (115)
As well, because of the different
character of the Koran as a sacred scripture, Islamic
science does not immediately face the same set of hurdles which
must be surmounted by science in the Judeo-Christian world:
Koran means Recital;
it is neither history nor myth but a series of over six thousand
verses in which the basic theme is the omnipotence of Allah (God)
and the command to submit (Islam) to the Divine Will....Like the
Christian, the Muslim accepts the reality of the transcendental
world, yet unlike Scripture, the Koran makes no pretense at a
cosmological system. When stories are related, even those from
the Judeo-Christian tradition, they are meant to emphasize the
power of Allah and the fearful price of refusing to submit. Therefore,
the science of the visible world is, on the whole, unencumbered
by revelation. In fact, the faithful are commanded by Allah to
study nature, for nature is His metaphor. Reason could, of course,
run afoul of religion, and Islam did have its Tertullians. But
the command to study nature and the underlying concept of its
unicity reflecting the oneness of God stimulated a keen interest
among Muslims in science. (115)
Note also the cultural melting
pot provided by the Muslim empire -- allowing the cross-fertilization
of Greek, Persian, Hindu, and Chinese thought.
--> situation of original philosopher/scientists, the Ionians
--> situation of Alexandria
as a center of Hellenistic science.
Al-Biruni: geologic change,
fossils (118)
ibn Sina (Latinized, Avicenna:
980-1037 C.E.): 118-119
ibn Bajja ("Avempace":
12th ct.) -- along with Philoponus, a root of Galilean mechanics
(119)
See the comparison between Islamic and Christian attitudes towards nature as conducive to science, p. 120
Note: the Islamic attitude
("Their obsession was not to understand the cosmic garden
for itself, but rather to find within its workings evidence of
the divine gardener." [120]) prefigures the attitude towards
nature we see in Francis and the Franciscans.
The Twelfth Century Renaissance:
the transmission of Arabic science to the West -- 120ff.