Its title notwithstanding, this book is not about the sociology of Islamic science. It does not deal with something parallel to, say, contemporary ‘Big Science’. It is a collection of articles, all quite good, dealing with the content of Islamic science, particularly the mathematical sciences, which were the focus of a 1998 Dibner Institute conference where these papers were first presented. ‘Enterprise’ in the title can be justified to some degree, since a number of the articles are surveys of broader topics, and in a couple of cases are systematic surveys of research done to date. The articles, by and large, share the strengths and weaknesses of current serious scholarship on Islamic science. They are formidably learned, presenting and interpreting the contents of what must often be hideously difficult texts.
On the other hand, there is rarely any context by which nonspecialists, or those whose interests are centered on topics other than the history of the mathematical sciences, might understand the significance of these scientific exercises. Historical context is generally confined to the citation of earlier or later texts dealing with the same problem. For example, consider Jacques Sesiano's article on the construction of magic squares, which are arrays of numbers in which the columns, rows, and diagonals all add up to the same number. Sesiano's article is certainly worthy: It gives a very detailed account of the various kinds of magic squares known to Muslim mathematicians at their height, shows how to construct these squares by several methods, and translates one of the key source texts. On the other hand, Sesiano gives us no real idea of why Muslim mathematicians invested their time in this particular problem, other than to say that “initially, the problem was a purely mathematical one” (199), and that later on, magic squares were used for magic amulets. We are left to wonder, was this a problem that mathematicians competed to solve? and if so, why? Were these squares exhibited in order to astonish laymen? Were they a key to some other problem in arithmetic or number theory? I am at this moment wearing a modern Afghan ring with a magic square. How did they come to be considered magic?
I am being unfair to the learned author, since he did not set out to research the cultural significance of magic squares, only to understand the mathematics by which they were created. Nevertheless, the fact is that studies of Islamic science—at least, the academically respectable ones—have tended to turn inwards, towards the problems of interpreting the scientific texts, in isolation from everything except their sources and successors. The role of science in the larger realm of Islamic culture and thought is left largely uninvestigated, contributing to what I suspect is an unjustified assumption that science played little role in Islamic culture as a whole. That contributes to the portrayal of Islamic culture as antirationalist or nonrationalist; that, in turn, has real implications, not only for the interpretation of Islamic cultural history, but also for the world in which we live.
That said, these articles are better than most in presenting significant topics in at least a larger scientific context. The most noteworthy such article is Gerhard Endress’ study of the history of the philosophy of mathematics in Islam from its Greek roots, through Kindi up to Averroes and Maimonides, with particular attention to the problem posed by the contradiction of physical and mathematical models in astronomy. Other articles dealing with larger topics include Paul Kunitzsch on the transmission of Hindu-Arabic numerals; Elaheh Kheirandish on Islamic optics to 950 CE; A. I. Sabra on the nature of Alhazen's achievement in optics; J. L. Berggren on tenth-century Islamic mathematics through the career of Abu Sahl al-Kuhi; and Ahmed Djebbar's long literature review on mathematics in Spain and North Africa between the ninth and sixteenth centuries. These are all interesting and useful articles that can be read by nonspecialists with profit, though not always with total comprehension, if only to get some sense of the sophistication and magnitude of the Islamic scientific enterprise.
Finally, there are some articles on more specialized topics, of varying degrees of interest to nonspecialists. Charles Burnett demonstrates that some Latin astronomical texts predating the main translation movement are actually based on sources deriving from Antioch. Following a general pattern to move the end date of active Islamic astronomy later and later, David Pingree and Julio Samsó discuss the transmission of Islamic astronomy in the seventeenth century, particularly the influence of the fifteenth-century astronomer of Samarqand, Ulugh Beg. Pingree discusses an exposition of Ulugh Beg's astronomy composed by a Hindu pandit in Sanskrit, while Samsó discusses the influence of Ulugh Beg in North Africa. Neither article is particularly accessible to nonspecialists, although the fact that such transmission of Islamic astronomy even existed is interesting and suggestive. Finally, Y. T. Langermann discusses Averroes’ criticism of Kindi's attempt to create a mathematical model for the action of compound drugs.
Leaving aside my illiberal complaints about what it is not, the book is handsomely and appropriately produced: good printing; minimal typographical errors; clearly produced, or reproduced, diagrams and illustrations; and a well-edited index—the last being a feature that is often skipped in edited volumes.
