Two days...

...ago visited the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) for the first time. Being the major museum in Toronto, its pretty unimpressive. I haven't seen many museums, unfortunately, but I have seen better ones. Even the Lahore museum, despite the neglect and the theft of its treasures, can match many aspects of the ROM. Funnily enough, the new structure at the front of the ROM has been called the ugliest building of the decade.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was thoroughly fake, a complete opposite of the hype created about it. Dimly lit, the tattered papers (or whatever material it was) projected no sense of antiquity or history. The writing on them seemed very recent, not the kind of faded out script that can convey a sense of the past. There was also a Quran and a Bible thrown in towards the end of the passage, presumably to link the Abrahamic religions together. (Writing this, I just remembered reading a Robert Fisk article about this exhibit at the ROM many months ago, and google threw up the article at once. It also mentions the attempt at politically correct unity ;) )

The dinosaurs section was pretty okay, and much more interesting for the children. The exhibits from different regions and countries of the world were small and disappointing.

During this holiday season, tickets were at half price after 4:30 pm. Lines were long, and it was 4 pm when I wanted to buy tickets. But the ticket seller was kind enough to offer us the discounted tickets in advance, though she did tell me not to tell anyone about it :) Being a student, I got in free, since post-secondary students can visit free on Tuesdays, at least during these holidays.

Currently reading...

...Times of Terror by Uli Schmetzer.

Finished reading...

...Science and Islam, A History by Ehsan Masood. This is the companion book to some BBC TV series.

The book is good, and offers a little bit different perspective to the contribution to science by Muslim scientists. What I liked was that it brings out the fact that advancement of knowledge is continuous, and not isolated, and peoples and societies borrow from each other in the process. Within this continuity there are innovations. The book also puts into perspective how the scientific institutions of the time depended on the whims of the rulers.

Some notes that I took are as follows:

Page 52 mentions that the scientist Al-Kindi was thinking about time, space and relative movement, and also used the Arabic word for relativity: "Time exists only with motion, body with motion, motion with body...if there is a motion there is necessarily body; if there is a body, there is necessarily motion".

On page 92 the author mentions that after the Mongol and Tamerlane destruction of Baghdad, the self-belief in the Muslims that God was on their side, that the world was theirs to explore, was undermined, and there was never the drive and energy coming from every level of society, from Caliph down, that had been there in the first seven centuries of Islam.

Page 109 has a mention of development of surgical tools by Al-Zahrawi, and his innovative use of catgut for sutures in internal operations.

Page 137: "In 1957, the historian Otto Neugebauer noticed a similarity between an illustration in Copernicus's first key book 'Commentariolus' (1514), in which he first set out the idea that the earth moves, and one in ibn al-Shatir's book in which he answered the problems of the moon's motion. The similarity was so striking that it seemed hard not to believe that Copernicus had seen ibn al-Shatir's book." Another apparent illustration match in Copernicus is mentioned in the book, this time with al-Tusi's 1260 Tadhkira.

Copernicus seems to have been good at plagiarism.

Page 146: "Omar Khayam, in 1079, calculated the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days, meaning he was out by less than the sixth decimal place - fractions of a second - from the figure we have today of 365.242190."

Page 206: "The tragedy of many predominantly Muslim societies has been that the voice of science has too often been associated with the blade of a ruler's sword, or the barrel of his gun."

Page 209: "Overall, the scientific performance today of the 57 member states of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) is not far off that of some of the poorest countries of the world - this in spite of the fact that OIC states include some of the world's wealthiest oil-producing nations."

Page 216: "The empires of Islam created the conditions of a staggering renaissance in science and technology, some of which undoubtedly helped the scientists of Western Europe. Yet the caliphs and rulers who were most enthusiastic about science were also harsh on their critics, and used science and new knowledge to force people to make choices in religion. If science is to return to the nations of Islam, it must do so without interfering in people's freedom to believe."

How's this...

...for an inscription on a grave:

"Sacrifice to the fallacy that war can end war".

Read the article here.

Back in...

...Mississauga.

Still in...

...Lahore.

Just check my email once a day. Have some Facebook friends requests, will respond when back in Mississauga.