Re-Writing the History of Mechanics: From the Islamic Golden Age to the Newtonian Synthesis

The standard account of the Scientific Revolution follows a gradual, Eurocentric trajectory from Copernicus to Newton, who ultimately developed the laws of mechanics in his Principia Mathematica. This history, while celebrating a monumental accomplishment, often omits the vital intellectual underpinnings established centuries ago. Challenging this truncated history, this essay contends that the conceptual underpinnings of Newtonian mechanics—specifically the concepts of inertia, acceleration, and gravitational attraction—was not generated ex nihilo in 17th-century Europe. This article will show that by studying the work of thinkers like Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham, Abu'l-Barakat al-Baghdaadi, and al-Khazini, they not only preserved Greek science but also critically challenged and enhanced it, creating precursor ideas to inertia and gravity. It will next follow the spread of these ideas into medieval Europe, where they directly affected the philosophers who set the groundwork for Galileo and finally Newton. Newton's synthesis requires acknowledging the crucial contributions of the Islamic scientific tradition, which have been overlooked, and therefore, mechanics is not considered an "Arabic innovation" in the modern sense.