Ibn al-Haytham's Geometrical Methods and the Philosophy of Mathematics : A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics

This fifth volume of A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics is complemented by four preceding volumes which focused on the main chapters of classical mathematics: infinitesimal geometry, theory of conics and its applications, spherical geometry, mathematical astronomy, etc.

This book includes seven main works of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and of two of his predecessors, Thābit ibn Qurra and al-Sijzī:

• The circle, its transformations and its properties;





• Analysis and synthesis: the founding of analytical art;





• A new mathematical discipline: the Knowns;





• The geometrisation of place;





• Analysis and synthesis: examples of the geometry of triangles;





• Axiomatic method and invention: Thābit ibn Qurra;





• The idea of an Ars Inveniendi: al-Sijzī.

Including extensive commentary from one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, this fundamental text is essential reading for historians and mathematicians at the most advanced levels of research.

Roshdi Rashed is one of the most eminent authorities on Arabic mathematics and the exact sciences. A historian and philosopher of mathematics and science and a highly celebrated epistemologist, he is currently Emeritus Research Director (distinguished class) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, and is the former Director of the Centre for History of Medieval Science and Philosophy at the University of Paris (Denis Diderot, Paris VII). He also holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Tokyo and an Emeritus Professorship at the University of Mansourah in Egypt.

J. V. Field is a historian of science, and is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art and Screen Media, Birkbeck, University of London, UK.