Machine summary:
On Arithmetic and geometry: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of EPISTLES 1 & 2 Nader El-Bizri, ed.
The book under review is part of an exciting new project initiated by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London to re-edit the whole text with critical analytical translations and annotations undertaken by a number of specialists around the world.
Nader el-Bizri, the translator and editor of the series, is a historian of philosophy and science in the Islamic world and has recently been focusing on the history of geometry, mathematics, and optics and publishing widely on Ibn al-Haytham (d.
After the first two epistles, epistle 3 deals with astronomy, epistle 4 with cosmography, epistle 5 with music, and epistle 6 with proportions (that ties the quadrivium together) – and that is before they move onto the next set of propaeduetics, namely the logical organon beginning with epistles 7 and 8 (the theoretical and practical arts) that provide a classification of the sciences on which the approach to holism is based.
El-Bizri provides a scholarly introduction that locates the Ikhwan’s work in the historical context of the creative school of Baghdad, which developed the mathematical ideas of Nicomachus and the wider tradi- tion associated with Archimedes of Syracuse (d.
Epistle 1 begins with a statement that the Ikhwan seek to study all of the sciences that pertain to existent things (mawjūdāt) and into their arrangement, order, and principles.