The Scholar’s Space

For large parts of the West’s intellectual history, things worked the other way round: it was important to translate from Arabic into Latin, and then into the growing vernaculars of Europe. Much of what we know about the science and math of Classical Antiquity came via the scholars and writers of the Golden Age of Islamic Science, who first translated the works of Aristotle,  Plato, the mathematicians and engineers of Hellenistic civilization into Arabic. These were subsequently re-translated by European scholars.  An organization called Kalima (the Word), based in Abu Dhabi, is sponsoring an energetic program of translation into Arabic of books written in Western languages. Books on scientific topics are important in Kalima’s focus. Some classic works, such as Newton’s Principia Mathematica are on the list, but books by modern authors such as Freeman Dyson, Stephan Jay Gould, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking are also scheduled. It’s a big job and it require some serious resources.
Kalima