| Ibn al Haytham - The First Scientist - Alhazen - Ibn al Haitham - Alhacen |
Book Signing at Somewhere Else Coffeehouse and Bookstore
8:44 PM, March 15, 2007, updated at 8:38 AM, March 16, 2007
Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist is my twenty-eighth book. It has been the most exciting and rewarding project of my career. It is the first full biography of Ibn al-Haytham to be published in English. I am not aware of any biographies about him published in any other languages, so it could be the first biography ever written about him.
There are biographical entries about Ibn al Haytham (sometimes spelled as Ibn al-Haitham and known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen) in various encyclopedias, of course, most notably Dr. A.I. Sabra’s lengthy entry in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Dr. Sabra and others who have translated Ibn al-Haytham’s works have included biographical sketches in the introductions to their works.
Most of these biographical summaries repeat stories passed down for one thousand years from the three historians who wrote about Ibn al-Haytham shortly after his death in 1040. I find these ancient accounts lacking in may ways. Not only do they conflict with one another, but they also conflict with an autobiographical letter Ibn al-Haytham wrote at the age of sixty-three. They also do not comport with the tone and content of Ibn al-Haytham’s books. Mine is the first biography to question these accounts and to offer alternative explanations regarding some of the events they describe.
I will discuss some the deficiencies I have found in the early accounts of Ibn al-Haytham’s life at a book signing and presentation at Somewhere Else Coffeehouse and Bookstore in El Cajon, California, at 4:00 p.m. on March 17, 2007. The title of my presentation is “Ibn al-Haytham: Divine Inspiration or Madness.” I will focus on the claims made by two of Ibn al-Haytham’s earliest biographers that he feigned madness to escape the duties and responsibilities of government posts that he held.
If you live in the San Diego area, I hope you will attend.
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