The same goes for turds.
Anyway, interesting link you gave there. I wonder if the 1001 Muslim inventions in that book are as fictive as the 1001 tales.
The gentleman mentions the period of the 7th to the 17th century as the time when the 'first manned flight' took place. This is a bad omen. Define 'manned flight', please.
Kites have been used as man lifters since Antiquity. Manned balloons were introduced by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. George Cayley's manned glider dates from 1853. In 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright came up with their flying bicycle - the first powered flight.
Where's Allah is all this?
And where's the 7th to 17th century in all this? Sure, Leonardo drew flying machines and maybe - just maybe- built one, though there is no evidence that he ever flew one. And in the thirteenth century a Chinese mandarin launched himself on a chair that had 48 rockets strapped to it. He flew alright - in very, very small pieces.
Muslims can be as smart as anyone else and Muslim societies produced some interesting inventions before religious orthodoxy and political autocracy killed the spirit of intellectual exploration and experiment in that culture. Similarly the Chinese never benefited from some of their fascinating early discoveries and inventions because Mandarin culture killed human initiative.
It was only in Europe, and by the end of the period mentioned, that the scientific worldview developed in spite of and in opposition to religious prejudice, allowing for systematic experimentation and theory-building. Property law did the rest. Henceforth a man could claim his own inventions and reap the benefits of them, eventually resulting in Europe's industrial take-off and military supremacy. The Chinese invented the rudder, gun powder and cartography alright. The British brought it back to China on superior ships with superior crews, using superior astronomical knowledge, and armed with superior guns.
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