The Belvedere, M.C. Escher
Posted on 01/17/2008 7:24:05 AM PST by forkinsocket
The mosques of the medieval Islamic world are artistic wonders and perhaps mathematical wonders as well. A study of patterns in 12th- to 17th-century mosaics suggests that Muslim scholars made a geometric breakthrough 500 years before mathematicians in the West.
Peter J. Lu, a physics graduate student at Harvard University, noticed a striking similarity between certain medieval mosque mosaics and a geometric pattern known as a quasi crystal—an infinite tiling pattern that doesn’t regularly repeat itself and has symmetries not found in normal crystals (see video below). Lu teamed up with physicist Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University to test the similarity: If the patterns repeated when extended infinitely, they couldn’t be true quasi crystals.
Most of the patterns examined failed the test, but one passed: a pattern found in the Darb-i Imam shrine (seen in the first video above), built in 1453 in Isfahan, Iran. Not only does it never repeat when infinitely extended, its pattern maps onto Penrose tiles—components for making quasi crystals discovered by Oxford University mathematician Roger Penrose in the 1970s—in a way that is consistent with the quasi crystal pattern.
Among the 3,700 tiles Lu and Steinhardt mapped, there are only 11 tiny flaws, tiles placed in the wrong orientation. Lu argues that these are accidents possibly introduced during centuries of repair. “Art historians always suspected there must be something more to these patterns,” says Tom Lentz, director of Harvard University Art Museums, but they were never examined with “this kind of scientific rigor.”
with only 'a few' typographical errors, where some words were spelled backwards...but those may have been the work of later editors, though we have no proof of that.
It is a beautiful object, that the "study's" authors attempted to turn into a religio-political statement, while inventing history.
At the same time, they admit there are flaws with their only "perfect" (the joys & wonders of modern education!) example, which in itself shows the lie of the 'mathematical discovery' aspect of it; else it would have been repeated, perfected, and applied in a growing, more general, and progressively sophisticated manner throughout Islamic art.
The entire "study" is just one more in the never ending series of the "greatness of Islamic science/math/technology/art" propaganda. It is not science, though it mimics some aspects of scientific study, so merits no exclusively serious 'discussion'.
This is a tile with repeating patterns on it, nothing more.
In point of fact, it is many thousands of tiles laid in a mosaic pattern, that just happens, while pleasing to the eye, demonstrates (almost) a mathematical principle discovered, and proved, many centuries later. It is like trying to state that Roman engineers understood modern engineering calculus, based on the surviving bridges or buildings that trial and error slowly evolved as safe, sturdy structures, while ignoring all the previous failed attempts; and without one shred of evidence of such sophisticated calculations.
Yes, we all know Islam is evil.
Sometimes, based on many (not yours!) posts I come across on FR, I'm not totally convinced of that. OTOH, these threads really are not the time & place for it.
Agreed. No more; no less; same as the Alhambra.
One can appreciate those, as well as Tours Cathedral, Angkor Wat, the ancient Chinese army statues, or prehistoric cave paintings, without making a political statement about their creators...or attributing dubious 'discoveries' to them.
Part of my failure to catch the mood on this thread may be due to me having become so able to cut through the crap in archaelogical articles that I only see the apparent facts without feeling it reflects positively on the modern scene at all. Maybe I have been reading FR too long and have simply developed an auto-filter mechanism when the underlying topic interests me on these types of articles.
It disgusts me even more, now.
Supposedly, they are making the past relevant to the present, through interpretation; but it seems that all the interpretation has to somehow project current PC dogma upon the past, or it isn’t relevant...or at least not published.
Jack and Poo .. and Poo went to get the honey.
Thanks bert.
I think stainlessbanner made that assertion.
First, on a statistical basis, enough monkeys with typewriters will eventually write War and Peace.
Second, look how they used this “knowledge”. Remember, until Europe needed their oil, they were subsistence tribes in the desert.
Since this pattern shows up in only one of thousands of Mosques, it does not appear to have any significance to the people who created it. However, whoring by the History Channel is nothing new. Based on their documentaries, we were the aggressors in WWII and lost the war, except during holocaust week then we were the cause of Hitler’s mania.
Oh, what the heck. A little something that was easy to find. “It should be noted that the Arabic numerals were neither invented by nor used by the Arabs. They were developed in India by the Hindus around 600 AD. Interestingly, these numbers were written “backwards”, thus one hundred twenty three was written 321.
Around 750 AD this system of decimal arithmetic was brought to Persia when several important Hindu works were translated into Arabic.
The noted Arab mathematician al-Khwârizmî (Muhammad b. Musa al-Khwârizmî ca. 875) wrote a textbook on the subject which now exists only in a number of Latin versions. In these a point is used for zero.
In ca. 952 Abu’l-Hasan-al-Uqlidisi wrote the Book of the parts of Indian Arithmetic which contains an explanation and application of decimal fractions. [Hassan and Hill 1986 p 24] In the transmission of Arabic numerals to Europe the method of writing numbers became reversed to the present method in the process.” [Knuth 1981 p 181]
“I think they copied mathematics from the Persians”
Armenian Christians actually did much of what the Muslim world claims to have done.
“You cannot simply be a stupid monkey with a paintbrush.”
You cannot simply be a stupid Muslim with a trowel.
Any better?
;-)
The Belvedere, M.C. Escher
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
