Prof. Dr. Taha Yasin Arslan

Istanbul Medeniyet University, Türkiye

John Greaves and his Pursuit of Knowledge
from the Islamic World

Please register to attend here.

When:
25 October, 2023: 16.15 – 17.45

Where:
Room C.2.07a
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene Brussel
Belgium

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This talk will focus on the Englishman John Greaves (1602-1652), a polymath who worked on astronomy, mathematics, metrology, and philology. His passion for learning did not recognize any boundaries, but was never aimless or simply theoretical. He was a scholar in action, striving to establish concrete evidence and proofs in the so-called exact sciences.

Taha Yasin Arslan is a historian of science and deputy director of the Institute for the History of Science at Istanbul Medeniyet University, Türkiye. He specializes in astronomical instruments from the Islamic world in the 13th-16th centuries. As part of his academic work, he makes replicas and reproductions of scientific instruments, which he also includes in his teaching. He also worked at St John’s College, Oxford with a project on John Greaves and his annotations of 17th-century Arabic and Persian astronomical manuscripts. Arslan is internationally recognized as one of the foremost experts on Islamic world astronomical instruments.