'This work represents a great advance in historical as well as sociological and anthropological approaches of natural sciences in Islamicate societies and opens up large perspectives for work by historians, naturalists and philologists.' Meyssa Ben Saad, Metascience
Preface: paths not taken; Introduction: Narratives of science, old and new; 1. A landscape of learning in the far west; Excursus: the poverty of intellectual history as a series of great men; 2. Constructing science in Morocco between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; Excursus: the horizons of causality: how to think about causes, nature, and ghosts of scientific methods; 3. Legalizing science: the authority of the natural sciences in Islamic law; Excursus: Kuhn and the history of science in Islamicate societies; 4. Writing the mathematical and natural sciences; Excursus: Sufism and the spiritual life: balancing the exoteric and esoteric sciences; Conclusion.