Delphiki wrote:
I don't agree with your 3rd rule, In recent history there aren't any inventions, just innovations.
I have a hard time thinking of anything (not just arabic or muslim) that would fit that criteria that couldn't be said to have a predecessor.
iphone is a type of cellphone, Alexander graham bell with the phone.
I know you didn't say that it couldn't have a predecessor but it seems like if I were to say "muslims created cellphones" you could say it doesn't really matter because we already had phones so it was only a matter of time until some other group made cellphones
True invention and creation is in the realm of ideas.
Examples: The Greeks invented axiomatic mathematics starting with Thales
The quantum of energy, right out of the head of Max Planck
Calculus -- first invented by Archimedes, then lost, then re invented by Leibniz and Newton
Gravity as geometry. Right out of the head of Albert Einstein. Had Riemann lived longer it might have been him, but he died all too young.
Concepts of symmetries as members of a group. Right out of the head of Evriste Galloise. He died way too young in a stupid duel. He showed the quintic is unsolvable using his invention - group theory.
To innovate, one must first invent. And it is ideas that are created ex nihilo (as it were) with the help of the Muses.
ruveyn