Ibn al-Haytham did not invent the Scientific Method

It would appear that Ihtesham Ali, with his 29.5k followers on Twitter, is a repeat offender. After having totally ballsed up an account of al-Khwarizmi’s al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah, he then took on Ibn al-Haytham’s Kitāb al-Manāẓir; (Book of Optics) in 640 enthusiastic words. This one is not quite as bad a train wreck at his al-Khwarizmi post, but it too contains a lot of historically incorrect claims that it pays to examine and set straight, as they are widespread and uncritically accepted by those who don’t know better. Ibn al–Haytham as imagined by Johannes Hevelius Ihtesham Ali: An Arab scholar in 1011 was placed under house arrest in Cairo for 10 years. He used the time to invent the scientific method, prove how vision actually works, and write a 7-volume book that Newton studied 600 years later. I read about him last night and could not stop thinking about it. His name was Ibn al-Haytham. The book is called the “Book of Optics.” The textbook story…