One of the main reasons why Linux and FOSS are so appealing to hitchhikers is because hitchhikers love freedom. After my recent trip to Dubai (and despite what certain current fundamentalist rulers have been know to say) I'd have to observe that at least economically Dubai is very free, and that Muslims there definitely don't hate freedom. But did this love of freedom come from the West? Surprisingly, the answer is no, or at least it's come full-circle, according to American author Henry Grady Weaver, who worked for General Motors when his book The Mainspring of Human Progress was published in 1947.


According to Weaver, the mainspring of human progress is freedom. The part of the book which is the most interesting in this Middle Eastern cultural context gives some history of freedom during the Golden Age of Islam. I haven't put all the background here, which is mostly about the origins of Islam, how originally it was based on principles of freedom and non-coercion. I have just included some sections which I think will be interesting concerning the origins of our modern science and mathematics.

Contributions of the Saracens



Schoolbooks lay great emphasis on European history, ancient and modern; but no point is made of the fact that, when Europe was stagnating in the so-called Dark Ages, the world was actually bright with a civilization more closely akin to what we have in America than anything that had gone before. Thirty generations of human beings who believed in personal freedom created that civilization and kept it going for 800 years.



In the deserts and the mountains and the steamy fertile river valleys, from the Ganges to the Atlantic, these people were of all races and colors and classes, all creeds, all former cultures, all former empires. They included Buddhists, Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Mongo-Arabs, Greeks, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Hittites, Africans, and hundreds of others whose ancient ancestors had worn the soil to dust before the earliest dawn of history.



There is no one name that correctly applies to all of these people. The Europeans, who hated them, called them "Saracens".



The records of the much-maligned Saracens - their 800 years of civilization, their institutions, their methods, their ways of living - are locked in their common language, Arabic. Since American historians are European-minded, we get only glimpses of the Saracens' world, seen through European misunderstanding and bitterness dating back to the Crusades. Because of the deep-seated prejudice, and in the interest of fair play, it seems appropriate to swing the pendulum the other way and present the Saracens' side of the story.



It is to Saracens that the world of today owes much of its science - mathematics, astronomy, navigation, modern medicine and surgery, scientific agriculture - and their influence led to the discovery and exploration of America.



In the world of the Saracens, no authority suppressed scientists, and no policeman harried them - nor did any government take care of them. They opened schools; and from Baghdad to Granada, students flocked to them. Some of these schools grew into great universities, and for hundreds of years they continued to grow.



Learning versus Teaching



The Saracen universities had no formal organization - Mohammed contended that too much organization leads to corruption. The rules were few. There were no standardized programs, no regular curriculums, no examinations. To guard against the fallacious idea that education ends with graduation, the Saracens' schools granted no diplomas, no degrees. They were institutions, not of teaching, but of learning. Students went there to acquire knowledge, just as Americans go to grocery stores to buy food.



Classes were held on an open-house basis. Anyone in quest of knowledge was free to wander about and listen. If he decided to remain, he picked a teacher and privately discussed with him what he wanted to learn and what he should study, and they agreed upon a fee. If, after joining the class, he didn't get the knowledge he wanted, he stopped paying the teacher and went to another teacher or another university. When he had learned what he thought he ought to know, he quit school and put his new knowledge to practical test.



For 800 years, the Saracens' schools and universities proceeded on the principle of freedom - on the basis of voluntary agreement between teacher and student. They offered all the learning of the past, with special emphasis on scientific knowledge.



One of the outstanding characteristics of the Saracens was their ability to build on the experiences of others. They studied the works of Aristotle, Galen, Euclid. They took unto themselves the past discoveries and techniques of the Greeks, the Chinese, the Romans - and usually found ways to improve upon them.



For example, consider the question of numerals: The figures that you find on an adding machine, or on the upper row of typewriter keys, or on the pages of this book are known as Arabic numerals.



Although handed down to us by the Saracenic Arabs, our numerals are really of Hindu origin. The Greeks and the Romans had seen the Hindu symbols in India; but they stuck to the clumsy Roman numerals and continued to do their adding, subtracting, and multiplying by clicking little balls along wires, as the Chinese still do. Not so with the Saracens. They seized upon the simple Hindu numbers and improved them. It is only when people are free that they being to look for labor-saving methods.



Priceless Zero



Not the least of the Saracens' contributions to our modern civilization is that their free minds were first to grasp the mathematical concept that the absence of a number - nothing - is itself a number. They invented zero, without which science as we know it today could hardly exist.



Offhand, that may sound a bit far-fetched; but think it over, and ask yourself what would happen in this modern world of meticulous calculations if we were compelled to discard the ciphers and the decimal points and go back to Roman numerals.



Having established the concept of zero, the Saracens proceeded to develop arithmetic. Then they added algebra, including quadratics. To Euclid's geometry, they added plane and spherical geometry and trigonometry. Applying these to sun, moon and stars, they produced astronomy. They built observatories across three continents, studied the heavens, recorded their observations, and put them to practical use.



They deduced the shape of the earth and its movements around its axis and around the sun, and they gave to Europeans the information that the earth is round, along with the calculations of its measurements. They invented the sextant and the magnetic compass, which made possible the navigation of their vessels on the open seas, beyond the sight of land.



They provided Christopher Columbus with the instruments and the charts which he took with him when he sailed west in search of a new route to India. The Saracens' calculations of latitude were very accurate, but of longitude not quite so good - which caused Columbus and his backers considerable embarrassment.



The Saracen navigator of a thousand years ago would have little trouble understanding the charts and instruments on today's most modern ocean liner. He would see improvements, but the only instrument that might really baffle him is the gyrocompass. He would be able to use it all right, but he wouldn't understand the electric energy that keeps it spinning.

Does any of this resonate with others involved with Linux and FOSS?