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Showing posts from September, 2016

Recent Reading

Sorry for not posting much recently, I'll try to do more.  To ease myself back in here are some quick reviews of a few books I've read recently that don't deserve their own posts, plus some insights I got from them. Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane  by Starr, S. Frederick was just what the title leads you to expect.  It's about the flowering of philosophy and science in central Asia between 750 AD and 1000 AD.  The number of merchants involved in the silk road trade had always given the region a large educated class and after the Arab conquest in 750 AD better connected the area to the Mediteranian there was a large intellectual flowering involving greats like  Ibn-Sina  and  Biruni .  But as time went on anti-intellectual movements such as Sufism and books like  Al-Ghazali's   The Incoherence of the Philosophers  made science and philosophy less reputable and more dangerous.  When the Mongol's rolled throug