Knowledge Bridges
&
Perceptions of Time

Photo by Adam Kring on Unsplash

Visualizing how the Islamic Golden Age influenced the West *

*Designed by Yann Kerblat as part of DVIA Final Project - Dec 2021

"Copernicus", "Fibonacci", "Da Vinci", etc. Indeed, the historiography of scientific breakthrough and technological discoveries is not only eurocentric but also very prominent and well documented.

Inspired by this captivating slope chart made by David McCandles and his team in 2018 (and the insightful research efforts that were undertaken required for this visual representation), below are two visual attempts to better understand the range and breath of these different discoveries.

The idea with these different visual explorations was to contrast perceptions of long periods of time with cultural connections, general knowledge as well as geographical proximity. Beyond the usual "East vs. West" dichotomy, both visual representations seek to plot the discoveries in temporal space but also seek to bring these discoveries closer to us by reminding ourselves that other regions have also visited very similar same milestones.

For example, this source explains almost a thousand years before Copernicus, the Persian scientist Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī believed that the Sun was the center of the Solar System. And, almost 500 years before Columbus, the Iranian scholar Al-Bīrūni proposed that there was a land to the West — America.

Finally, using the number of google hits enables us to contrast these temporal connections with the level of general of familiarity one might have with these influentials inventors.