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Old Islamic Tile Patterns Show Modern Math Insight

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the high-tech-tetris dept.

arbitraryaardvark writes "Reuters reports that medieval Muslims made a mega math marvel. Tile patterns on middle eastern mosques display a kind of quasicrystalline effect that was unknown in the west until rediscovered by Penrose in the 1970s. 'Quasicrystalline patterns comprise a set of interlocking units whose pattern never repeats, even when extended infinitely in all directions, and possess a special form of symmetry.' It isn't known if the mosque designers understood the math behind the patterns or not."

4 of 538 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Catholic Church happened. by denoir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately their civilisation was destroyed by a European power under the aegis of the Catholic Church.
    Although the crusades made a deep political impact and united the Muslim world, they managed to self-destruct all by themselves. The reason was the teachings of one al-Ghazali, the most influential thinker in Islamic history. His religious views became law and are still dominant in the Islamic world.

    Briefly put, his ideology was that science is intrinsically evil because it proposes that there are natural laws and that would limit the power of God. When an object drops to the floor it doesn't do so because of gravity, but because God wills it. Every event is a singular expression of Gods will and cannot and should not be analyzed and explained.

    As you can imagine this did marvels for science in the Islamic world. From being world leader they by their own doing they removed themselves from the game completely. And we have the same view today. In the Muslim world, technology is seen as OK but science as bad. Thanks to that plainly idiotic view they have blocked their own development. There are more books translated in Spain to Spanish than there have in the Arab world translated into Arabic since the 7th century.

    Really sad given how great their contributions to early science were. They were centuries ahead of the Europeans but blew it all. It is easy to blame the crusaders but in fact they were only enablers - to kick them out, the Islamic powers all united under one ruler and a single political system.

  2. Re:Why wouldn't they? by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The number system we use is actually originally derived from Hindu numerals. They were the first to use the number '0' to create a positional number system, which is what put it head and shoulders above the Roman one.. But that's besides the point.

    I'm not saying Muslim nations weren't, in many respects (especially maths and astronomy), the most advanced nations around at the time. What I am saying is that it's a bit of a leap from "they used this shape" to "they knew all the advanced mathematics that can be derived from studying this shape."

    --
    // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
  3. Penrose was a the CO-discoverer of aperiodic tiles by notthepainter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is little know that Robert Amman co-discovered one of Penroses aperiodic tiles. Amman was am amatuer mathematician in the United States. See his wiki page.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ammann

    I knew Bob Amman. I shared an office with him in my first job out of college. He was doing minor programming work for a small network/modem company in the early 80s. His white board always had tiled diagrams on it. I graduated from MIT but he was probably the best example I knew of a prodigy.

    The curious thing about Amman was how poorly he dealt with life. A man of his genius should not have ended up at the post office.

    I never knew he was famous until years later when something must have happen to Penrose (quasicrystals?) and Amman was in the local paper. I couldn't believe the guy I worked with traveled in these circles. One of the scientists I worked with at Kodak had a book on tiles. I checked the index, Amman was all over it, using cited by other mathematicians "unpublished personal correspondence."

    It makes one wonder what other geniuses are out there sorting mail.

    Paul

  4. Al Ghazali & Ahmed Sirhindi by vakibs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Al Ghazali was indeed a very influential philosopher who brought in umpteen damage to the scientific inquiry of the Islamic world. But the real damage was done by another person called Ahmed Sirhindi. In simple words, what he has said was that human brain is futile. Any effort to understand nature/God through reasoning and thought is a waste of time. The only way salvation could be obtained is through studying the Kuran (the unmorphed message from God) and the Hadith (stories about the life of Mohammed). Without the use of Mohammed, man is inherently powerless to understand Nature or God ! In his philosophy, the biggest evil were the Greek & Hindu philosophers. His philosophy sounded the death to the movement of Sufism (mysticism and philosophy) in Islam. At the same time, it put an end to the systematic enquiry of science. Ahmed Sirhindi became the Mujaddid (the equivalent of the pope in Islam) and he convinced the Ottoman empire to use his methods. He convinced the Mughal empire in India to use his methods. Consequently, India and Arabia were mired in dark ages ever since 1000 AD.His influence is strongly felt in the later and the final Mujaddid - Wahhab of Saudi Arabia. The major school of Islam in Pakistan and India is the Deoband school, which is drawn from the ideas of Wahhab & Sirhindi. These are the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism. It is no wonder that all glories of Islamic mathematics, medicine and astronomy were reached before 1000 AD.