The Mirror of the Excellences of Islam — Page 188
PREFACE FOOTNOTE 187 latter have added the results of their own investigations. The investiga- tions of our own times, however, differ from these explanations in many respects. AUTHOR'S MARGIN NOTE This assertion is completely preposterous and without foundation that all con- temporary debates in natural science and astronomy, along with their every detail, have been proven conclusively and definitively through experi- mental means. Yes, it is true that some questions have been clarified to some degree through experimentation, but these bear the same rela- tion to the remaining ques- tions as the rare bears to the commonplace. The most disheartening aspect of these speculations is that every now and then the old ideas are swept away by newer ideas. There was a time when the scientific and astronomical knowledge of the Greeks con- stituted the correct approach, but today many of their investigations are ridiculed and looked down upon. And there is no rea- son to doubt that after some time this very science and astronomy may be laughed at by people; for, although it is claimed that the present-day science and astronomy is based on actual experiments, this claim is highly exaggerated. In certain cases, the confirmed theoretical part of sci- ence has been arbitrarily mixed with a great number of doubtful and unproven hypotheses, which have certainly not been fully and com- pletely confirmed by any scientist. a Modern researchers believe shooting stars to be made up of substance like iron and coal, weighing at most a few pounds. These meteors travel in elliptical orbits like comets, in large numbers, and revolve in space around the sun. They are illuminated because of the heat generated in the course of their speedy movement through space. About comets, they state that some of them endure for thousands of years, breaking up at last into meteors. They also say that when the sun is in Leo or Virgo, during both these times the shooting stars may be expected in abundance. Such a phenomenon generally takes place after every 33 years, but this is not an absolute rule for such phenom- ena may also occur even before or after the lapse of this time. For example, the falling of stars witnessed in 1872, by the admission of