Scientific Method

More realistic and practical Muslims adopted the experimental method to harness scientific knowledge. Observation and experiment became the vehicle for their scientific pursuits; as a result, they gave science a new outlook the world had never known. Their achievements in experimental science added a golden chapter to the annals of scientific knowledge and opened a new vista for the growth of modern sciences.
Europe’s scientific advances during the Dark Ages (5th to 15th century) were handicapped. This setback stemmed from the narrowly dogmatic views of some conservative churches, which led to Galileo’s sentencing. Unlike some churches that removed reason from belief, Islamic belief integrates observation, reason, and intellect into its fabric. For Muslims, the first word revealed to Prophet Muhammad was “Read.” Thus, intellect and religion work together. Hundreds of verses in the Holy Qur’an inspire readers to observe and reflect. Here are some examples: “Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alteration of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which God sends down from the skies and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that he scatters through the earth; in the ordinance of the winds, and the clouds obedient between heaven and earth;… (here) indeed are signs for people who have sense.” Qur’an, 2:64. “And do they not see that We do drive rain to parched soil, and produce therewith crops, providing food for their cattle and themselves? Have they not the vision?” Qur’an, 32:27.
“Say: ‘Travel through the earth and see what the end of those before you.’” Qur’an, 30:42.
“On earth are signs for those of assured faith, as also in your own selves: will you not then see?” Qur’an, 51:20.
“Say: ‘are those equal, those who know and those who do not know?’” Qur’an, 39:9. 
“Is this then a fake, or is it you that do not see?” Qur’an, 52:15. “Thus God brings the dead to life and shows you His signs: Perchance you may understand.” Qur’an 2:73. Muslims consider the universe a visible sign of God. To understand God’s Omnipotence, Muslims must investigate all aspects of the universe. This belief manifested in a wealth of Muslim scientific advances that helped shape the Renaissance. George Sarton in his book “Introduction to the History of Science” gave a tribute to an array of Muslim scientists who at the roots of this scientific revolution during the Middle Ages, he said:“It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, ‘Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, ‘Ali Ibn ‘Isa al-Ghazali, al-zarqab, Omar Khayyam. A magnificent array of names that would be easy to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D.”
It is absolutely wrong to assume that Europe formulated the experimental method. Roger Bacon, who in the West is known as the originator of the experimental method, received his training from the pupils of Spanish Moors and learned everything from Muslim sources. Ibn al-Haitham’s influence on Roger Bacon is clearly visible in his works.
Europe was slow to recognize the Islamic origin of its much-advertised scientific (experimental) method. In his book, “The Making of Humanity,” Briffault states, 
“It was under their successors at the Oxford School that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic science. Neither Roger Bacon nor his later namesake deserves credit for introducing the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method to Christian Europe; he never wearied of declaring that, for his contemporaries, knowledge of Arabic and Arabic science was the only way to true knowledge.
Discussions about who originated the experimental method… are part of a colossal misrepresentation of European civilization’s origins. By Bacon’s time, the experimental method was widespread among Arabs and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe….Science is Arab civilization’s most momentous contribution to the modern world, but its fruits ripened slowly. Only long after Moorish culture sank back into darkness did the giant it had given birth to rise in might. Science alone did not bring Europe back to life. Other, manifold influences from the civilization of Islam gave European life its first glow.
For although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the permanent distinctive force of the modern world, and the supreme source of its victory—natural science and the scientific spirit..,
The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture; it owes its existence….The ancient world was, as we saw, pre-scientific. Greek astronomy and mathematics were a foreign importation, never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized, and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, and detailed, prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament.
Only in Hellenistic Alexandria did anyone approach scientific work in the ancient classical world. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.”‘ 

In his outstanding work “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,” Dr. M. Iqbal, the poet of Islam, writes, “The first important point to note about the spirit of Muslim culture then is that for purposes of knowledge, it fixes its gaze on the concrete, the finite. It is also clear that the birth of the method of observation and experiment in Islam resulted not from a compromise with Greek thought but from prolonged intellectual warfare with it. In fact, the influence of Greeks who, as Briffault says, were interested chiefly in theory, not in facts, tended rather to obscure the Muslim’s vision of the Qur’an, and for at least two centuries kept the practical Arab temperament from asserting itself and coming to its own.” 

Thus, the experimental method, reason, and observation introduced by the Arabs drove the rapid advancement of science during the medieval period.