Ibn il-Haytham: The First Scientist
Little known in the West, Ibn al-Haytham was a medieval scholar whose insistence on the use of experiments to test hypotheses revolutionized the way people acquired knowledge about the universe. In this session, author Bradely Steffens will discuss Ibn il-Haytham's life, achievements, and impact on European learning. Steffens will also explore two biographical accounts, written shortly after al-Haytham's death that suggest the scholar feigned madness to escape his duties as a civil servant in Basra, and, later, in Cairo. Steffens examines reasons for believing that Ibn al-Haytham feigned nothing, but suffered from a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome.
