Hundreds of years before the combined births of Galileo Galilei & Sir Francis Bacon, there was Abu Ali Al-Hasan Al-Haytham Al-Basri or simply Al-Hazen born in 965 & lived until 1040. However, he is more commonly known as Ibn Haytham by the majority of scholars, researchers, & general enthusiasts of history. As his complete name denotes, Al-Hazen was born in the modern day city of Basra in Iraq. Throughout history, the City of Basra periodically changed hands of sovereignty between Arabs & Persians. Although little is known about Al-Hazen’s early life, his upbringing was marked by Arab & Persian cultural influences considering the geographic crossroads unique to Basra. His surviving autobiographical work is recognized as more of a compiled reflection of his scientific work, intellectual aspirations, & case specific curiosities than a succession of personal stories & reflections. During his lifetime, he traveled & lived in the greatest centers of the Islamic Enlightenment during the Abbasid & Mamluk caliphates in the multicultural cities of Baghdad & Damascus, but he lived the majority of his life in Cairo.
Al-Hazen cherished the conceptual reality of the contestable truth using methods of methodological scrutinization. By introducing a scholastic ethos based on adversarial relationships with conventional knowledge, flaws derived within & inherent thereof otherwise recognized as indisputable fact would emerge as self-evident when logically scrutinized through empiric evidentiality. The functional basis of which remains as the underlying foundation for the modern scientific method as known & practiced in our 21st century reality. Haytham’s centralizing emphasis on experimentation transformed into a universal school of scientific thought where anything from laboratory to thought experiments can prove tangible yet testable validity to any given hypothesis, premise, or argument pending scientific merit on the observed subject matter in question (Ansari Razaullah, Sheikh Mohammed. 2015). Assumptions of indisputability create a certain hegemony on what becomes conventional knowledge. From here, conventionality is translated into a standardized law of knowledge in which the rest of science is assumed to reciprocate. This can be recognized as the “dictatorship of the indisputable.”
Al-Hazen realized the scientific finding of one result can be discounted & dismissed by another preventing further scientific discovery when predisposed hegemonies of thought deny existence to an unconventional experiment challenging preexisting knowledge on scientific truth. That same hegemony can acquire sociological absorption by society’s body intelligentsia as a supporting construct of an otherwise undergirding truth situating orthodoxic dogma of conventional science. Man finds limitations by his own conventionalisms succumbing to pre-conceptualisms of mind, truth, & reality. Al-Hazen understood timidity to be part & parcel of the human condition when tasked with exploring new frontiers into the universal unknown. From this extrapolation it can be posited that by natured default, man is generally predisposed to apply the same body of conventionalisms to comprehend phenomena otherwise surpassing his knowledge reducing each observation to a lesser pre-conceptualism. The onus on rediscovering the discovered for purposes of expanding known frontiers of discovery is suggestive of reinventing what we know for purposes of applying new findings previously neglected. This refines our understanding of scientific knowledge through processes of perpetual experimentation.
In addition, one of Al-Hazen’s more prominent scientific postulations is derivable from his studies in optics. His emphasis on the circularity & sphericity of Earth determined the planet comprises of spherical irregularities relative to surface topography. Simply, the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but reflective of the planet’s topographic diversity which influences the distribution of light on various surfaces relative to angular origin of reference. Thus, Al-Hazen’s study of refraction led to his proposition of a finite atmospheric depth of 15 kilometers from the Earth’s surface posited on the basis of light refraction at dusk with the sun below 19 degrees on the observable horizon (O’Connor, J.O. & Robertson. 1999). Al-Hazen’s findings gravitate toward a uniform field theory suggesting the necessity of synergizing circularity & sphericity when exacting Earth’s curvature.
The greatest obstacle to such uniformity materializes in rectifying dimensionality with circularity. Depending on point of origin combined with the angular distribution of light, circularity when observed rudimentarily creates the illusion of dimensional surface diversity when exacting physical surface characteristics from afar. This suggests that perhaps a quantum connection exists between the unification of both when light is distributed through a synthetic optical sieve. An illusive diversification factor is possible through predisposed dimensional positioning. This inspires a new thesis: the farther an object, the greater the simplicity which stands punctuated by the anticipation of uniformity on its dimensional surface.
In a related corollary, Al-Hazen explores the beginnings of gravitational properties unique to the inner-Earth originating from the core. He speculated the inner-Earth functions as a centrifugal force preserved in a perpetual state of restful equilibrium protecting the inner-Earth from geophysical phenomena such as plate tectonics (Langermann, Tzvi. Y. 2016). Similar to exploring the lowest known depths of the ocean floor, our understanding of the inner-Earth remains abundantly rudimentary. The realization of which can inspire new research in determining the nature of Earth’s gravity utilizing the following questions for areas of potential research: is the distribution of Earth’s gravity unique to each layer comparatively when compartmentalized locally? Is there a scaled magnitudinal force derivable from planetary layers that denote & ultimately designate how interactive transitions localize in the general distribution of gravity from inner-Earth gravity?
Can inner-Earth gravity be applied referentially as a model to map gravity generally for purposes of plotting inner-planetary properties relative to gravitational mass & density of Earth in addition to planets in our solar system & beyond? Finally, can gravity as a universal application of force be utilized as an energy source when it becomes possible to measure, isolate, & synthetically compartmentalize different gradations of inner-planetary gravity in isolation from each other? Through direct inspiration from Al-Hazen’s medieval findings, different gradations of gravity can be identified & classified aphysically which can aid in determining the actual origins of gravity. Throughout the ages, man’s understanding of gravity has been a mysterious one leaving more to the imagination than material provability & demonstrability.
Al-Hazen left behind a legacy based on originality in observation & methodological research. He stressed that known conventions of knowledge must be challenged & scrutinized to the greatest extent possible. Criticality through raw observation can unveil previously neglected findings once dismissed as extraneous & irrelevant by the prevailing intelligentsia. Perhaps Al-Hazen’s greatest lesson suggests that orthodoxy in methodology carries great potential to be tyrannical in nature when pushing known frontiers of knowledge into new & revolutionary domains. A reality where the conventional is perpetually contestable to forces of truth derived from the power of raw observation.
Works Cited
*O’Connor, J.O. & Robertson, E.F. (1999, November). “Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.” MacTutor.
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Al-Haytham/
*Ansari Razaullah, Sheikh Mohammad. (2015, September, 14). Ibn Al-Haytham’s Scientific Method.
https://en.unesco.org/courier/news-views-online/ibn-al-haytham-s-scientific-method
*Langermann, Tzvi. Y. (2016). Ibn al-Haytham’s On the Configuration of the World. Routledge Library Editions: Language & Literature of the Middle East.