Few know this, but the 20^th Century began in the year 940 AD, when the Muslim scholar and mathematician, Ibn Sahl was born.  Anyone in the audience who concludes I am waxing rhetorical again is in for a rough ride, for Ibn Sahl became known the world over as the first person in history to quantify a theory of optics.

 

Correction, Ibn Sahl should have been known the world over, but the most significant scientific mind to ever have lived was born in obscuration.  Although Caesar’s bloody empire had technically not existed for centuries, the legacy of Caesar’s system of apartheid persisted for centuries.

 

Ibn Sahl was born into obscuration not because Arabia was divided.   Not at all.  Arabia was experiencing the Islamic Rennaissance, an era which spanned a century and more wherein relative peace and undeniable prosperity reigned in the Islamic world.

 

Ibn Sahl was born into obscurity because Caesar so hated the world that he sacrificed everyone’s son to achieve total control over the known world.  In the last centuries BC and first centuries AD, what Caesar knew of the world was just limited.

 

I am perplexed why any scholar today venerates Caesar as a civilizing agent, Julius Caesar implemented a system of control which cannot be mistaken for anything less than apartheid. 

 

Both scholars and mental health professionals alike are astounded by Christians who live in apocalyptic fears of government controls, but that is only because the rehabilitation of Caesarean Apartheid into the Roman Empire has been complete.

 

Let’s not mince words.  History’s Greatest Dictator will likely never be surpassed in the scope and consequences of his crimes.  Total control was Caesar’s goal and, to achieve it, Caesar implemented a system of apartheid on the premise of earned citizenship. 

 

Before Caesar’s new model army, it was ever and always the Nobility who fought wars, which they did only after great deliberation or without choice, for it was they who would die if defeated in battle.

 

Caesar changed all that.

 

Caesar offered commoners from regions around Rome upward social mobility in exchange for their service in Caesar’s bloody legions.  For a mere fifteen years of duty, even a poor or destitute man could become eligible to serve in Rome’s Senate, or possibly even become Caesar themselves one day.  For those with less loftier ambitions, the monetary rewards were profound.

 

Caesar monetized warfare in ways with which scholars are still wrapping their heads around.  Never before, and never since, has any standing army in the world promised veterans of its ranks ownership of lands and vassals in conquered territories.

 

One need not wonder why Caesar’s bloody rampage lasted 700 years and showed no signs of stopping.

 

Caesar’s sadistic design was a stroke of evil genius, for Caesar alleviated the risk of a coup, or even competition in Rome merely by settling all combat veterans at the furthest reaches of apartheid.  And make no mistake about it. 

 

Apartheid is precisely what Caesar implemented in half of Europe, parts of Arabia and nearly all of Northern Africa. 

 

Unless you were a Roman citizen, you had no rights whatsoever, not even to travel.  No commerce was sanctioned which was not financing Caesar’s apartheid government.  Anything, and everything, was subject to tax or expropriation at the whim of retired Legionaries who controlled newly conquered lands in all directions.

 

The Kingdoms of Arabia were suffering the lasting effects of apartheid as much as the kingdoms of Europe.  Arabia just recovered faster than Europe due to Arabia’s proximity to India.

 

No, Ibn Shal cannot be credited with inventing the lens, for he was improving on knowledge newly acquired from India.  While Christendom still slumbered in the dusk hours of the Dark Ages, Islam was reveling in the redemption of civilization and the prosperity civilization brings.

 

The point being made is that we all narrowly escaped total control.  In the first century AD, prophets forewarned of a return to this madness in revelations which haunt the human imagination to this very day.  And why should the prospect of total despotism not haunt the imagination?

 

But we aren’t here to analyze apocalyptic thinking, just recognize the context and ethos of an age when a Muslim scholar codified the mathematical principals by which light overcomes darkness.

 

In quantifying the refractory laws of optics, Ibn Sahl gave birth to the 20^th Century.

 

You still believe I wax rhetorical?

 

I hardly think so.

 

Consider the lens and all it has delivered, both in terms of curses and in terms of blessings.  What would the 20^th Century have been without the lens?  Nothing but a replay of the 18^th century, that is what the 20^th century would have been without Ibn Sahl.

 

In the essays to follow I explore, comprehensively but briefly, the ripples which resounded through the human condition because of a Disciple of God.  And make no mistake about it, that is precisely who Ibn Sahl was and remains to this day, a Disciple of God.  For, when Ibn Sahl was not investigating the properties of light at the crystalline intercept, Ibn Sahl was in daily prayer searching for answers which alluded him in his work.

 

Like Albert Einstein centuries later, Ibn Sahl was dedicated to seeking the truth of God in the most powerful and relevant force in Creation: Energy.  In Ibn Sahl’s day, in every before, and in every age since, light was regarded as the most potent and most direct manifestation of the Creator.

 

No, I don’t believe the Creator is light, for light is clearly a derivative of the universe in which we live, and any entity responsible for creating the universe had to exist from without, not from within space-time.

 

Before this degenerates into a Star trek convention, let’s just all agree that Ibn Sahl was not pursuing a patent on the camera.  But make no mistake about it.  A Camera is precisely what Ibn Sahl made possible in his life’s work.  A camera and so much more.

 

A magnifying glass was the immediate result of Ibn Sahl’s efforts.  The magnifying glass was immediately followed by the telescope, an invention the Crusaders brought back with them from the Crusades.  And, while there is abundant evidence crude lenses, that crystals and eventually glass spheres were used by many cultures prior to Ibn Sahl’s contribution, everything came into crisp focus because of Ibn Sahl.

 

Everyone wearing glasses just to read this text will not need to be convinced Ibn Sahl is their Patron Saint.  But even the myopic will not fully realize the depth of Ibn Sahl’s contribution to the human condition.  Following the invention of the telescope, the microscope opened new vistas to science in the microcosm.

 

In both the macrocosm and the microcosm, all that followed from Ibn Sahl elegant mathematics is a fantastic mosaic of innovation rippling across the centuries.  The ripples show no sign of stopping either.

 

Everything, and I do mean everything we regard as “modern” was only possible because of optics.

 

Imagine the 20^th century without telescopes, or microscopes, or cameras.

 

Just try.  I dare you.

 

All of modern astronomy, modern physics, photography and, of course, television and film are impossible without refractory lenses conforming to Iban Sahl’s algorithm.

 

In the absence of the lens, we would all have remained trapped in Galileo’s world, still convinced the earth was flat and suspecting diseases which carried on “foul airs” or “poor humors”.

 

The implications may not have sunken in for the science fiction crowd, so let me spell it out for them.  No lens means no Star Trek.

 

In fact, no space program would have been possible without all the contributions made by the Ibn Sahl.  No modern medicine.  We’d all still be oblivious to the existence of parasites, bacteria and viruses.

 

No X-rays at hospitals.  Doctors would still be manipulating broken limbs to discern fracture lines – ouch – and setting them based on an educated guess.

 

Any volunteers to travel back in time to those days?

You won’t have to go far to encounter completely unacceptable conditions.  Antibiotics were only first used in human beings to treat infections on D-Day hospital ships.

 

In the following essays I will be following the ripples caused by the answers a Disciple of God received in prayer.

 

Anyone interested in truly understanding the madness of the 20^th Century will want to pay close attention because the history books completely neglect social failures and mass delusions which occur as each ripple resolves in one epiphany after another.

 

It is not so much the lens as the knowledge gained through the lens which made scientific innovation possible.  The Family of Mankind has not coped well with epiphanic thresholds crossed along the way.  In the following essays, I offer a focused perspective on the socio-psychological consequences induced at each epiphanic threshold.

 

Perhaps, just perhaps, if we can recognize our flawed reflex to catastrophize at the edge of accepted knowledge we may avert the next Holocaust.

 

No.  Do not mistake me for blaming the Holocaust on Ibn Sahl.  That was entirely science’s doing.  Ibn Sahl’s quantification of optical laws invited as many blessings as it did curses.  The Socialist Holocausts of the 20^th Century is just that curse which threatens to obscure all the blessings Ibn Sahl delivered.

 

Enough said.

 

Let’s fast forward to the day Galileo proved Copernicus was right.  Next