People who solve real problems with science

This lesson asks you to describe how science and technology are used in various occupations to address real problems, and to analyse what different communities have contributed to science and technology. The museum offers two people who worked in medieval Muslim societies, an engineer and a physician; the class brings the occupations of today, including the skilled trades, and the contributions of other communities, which the museum does not hold. ¹

The expectations link a skill to a problem and a contribution to a community. For each person you read about, note who needed the work, what problem it answered and what we know of how it was done.

The engineer al-Jazari served the Artuqids at Amid in 1181–1206, and TDV says his book was commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud ². TDV describes six divisions covering clocks, vessels for drinking and banquets, fountains and automatic musical instruments, and water-raising machines ². It describes coloured drawings and lettered parts, with instructions that move from the general form to making the components, assembly and operation ². TDV adds that little is known of his life beyond his book's introduction ².

The sources used for this lesson contain no sentence in which al-Jazari or Ibn al-Nafis says why he chose his work. For al-Jazari they show a patron: TDV says the book was commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud ². For Ibn al-Nafis they show a physician whom the chronicle calls the shaykh of medicine in Egypt, who dictated his works from memory and endowed his properties and books to the Mansuri hospital ^{3 4}. These are facts about their work, not stated motives.

A book of many devices can make an engineer look like the inventor of everything in it. TDV is more careful: it places al-Jazari in a tradition extending from Hellenistic engineering to the Banu Musa, and describes an engineer improving earlier work, not the inventor of every underlying principle in his book ².

Al-Jazari's book was commissioned by a ruler, while Ibn al-Nafis left his properties and books to a hospital. For which of the two do the records tell you more about who needed the work and what problem it answered, and what is missing for the other?

• Al-Jazari: the book of devices, its drawings and its copies.
• Ibn al-Nafis: the physician and his books.
• The castle clock: water, floats and an operator who resets the machine.
• The double-piston pump: a pump driven by flowing water.

Read about al-Jazari and Ibn al-Nafis. Draw a table with one row for each: the occupation, the problem it answered and the people it served. Then add a third row for an occupation in your own community.