All the sciences came to exist in Arabic. The systematic works on them were written in Arabic writing.
Interpretation
Ibn Khaldun highlights the crucial role of the Arabic language in the advancement of science and knowledge.
This quote from Ibn Khaldun emphasizes the historical significance of the Arabic language as a medium through which many scientific disciplines were developed and documented. It acknowledges that the systematic exploration and writings in various fields of science were primarily conducted in Arabic, underscoring the cultural and intellectual contributions of the Arabic-speaking world to global knowledge.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of linguistic diversity in education, this quote can serve to illustrate the historical significance of the Arabic language.
Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.
Throughout history many nations have suffered a physical defeat, but that has never marked the end of a nation. But when a nation has become the victim of a psychological defeat, then that marks the end of a nation.
He who finds a new path is a pathfinder, even if the trail has to be found again by others; and he who walks far ahead of his contemporaries is a leader, even though centuries pass before he is recognized as such.
The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.
You have no choice as a professional chef: you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes part of yourself. I certainly don't cook the same way I did 40 years ago, but the technique remains. And that's what the student needs to learn: the technique.
Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose itβs an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
As one reads mathematics, one needs to have an active mind, asking questions, forming mental connections between the current topic and other ideas from other contexts, so as to develop a sense of the structure, not just familiarity with a particular tour through the structure.
What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare.
Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.
One of the main truths of all education is that if the young are not always right, the old are always wrong.
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