1001 Inventions – 1001 Lies
25:00
25 Apr 2015
History of Science
Stop Spamming
This vlog (video blog) by Stop Spamming represents the 1001 Inventions exhibition and material to be propaganda. Although he agrees that there were many great scholars in the Islamic empires, he disagrees with the presentation of the number of inventions or discoveries. Rather, he suggests that they were refinements of earlier thinking, in much the same way that some of the Renaissance scientists used the astronomical observations of scientists from the Islamic world. He discusses examining where the funding came from for the series.
He makes some good points but fails to follow through. For instance, he points out that the “Arab world” is not the same as the “Islamic world”, as not all Arabs are Muslims and not everyone living in an Islamic empire is necessarily Muslim. However, he does not follow through with any examples of distortions that this difference might have caused. He compares the overtly glossy and perhaps overblown book accompanying the exhibit to Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation, which few would suggest is anything but propaganda and distortion.
He closes the vlog with a call not to be gullible.
Evaluation:
There is little here addressing Islam. Stop Spamming’s quibbles are not with religion, at least not in this video. His problems seem to lie largely with the distortions or misrepresentations of “discoveries” and “inventions” of things that were not. But in some cases he’s also selecting historical sources that are only diametrically opposed to the views of the creators of the 1001 Inventions exhibit, by using late 19th century works as historical sources for the 14th-15th centuries.
There are only a few inventions that Stop Spamming mentions specifically: Ibn al-Haytham’s invention of a pinhole camera, humans flying with a glider, water clocks, and the discovery of coffee. Following Stop Spamming’s advice and digging into the details of these representations is probably a good suggestion, using solid historical sources.