The Appropriation and Marginalization Theories of Islamic science are competing theories regarding the extent to which Islamic science contributed to Greco-Roman learning during the European Middle Ages. The Appropriation Theory contends that the Islamic scholarly society purposefully sought out ancient Greek and Latin science and used it as the principal cornerstone for its own unique science, while the Marginalization Theory states that in Islamic society, translation of works from Greek and Latin into Arabic was the only real effort and that there was little creative achievement and little or no pursuit of original knowledge.
The so-called Islamic Golden Age, a period of scientific, philosophical, and cultural growth from the 8th to 13th centuries, coincided with the latter part of the major Western decline in learning culture. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 5th century, the West entered a period of drastic decline in almost all scholarly areas, produced almost no major engineering or architectural works, little philosophical or literary works, and experienced an unprecedented decline in trade and commerce. The term Dark Ages, which was once applied to the entirety of the European Middle Ages, is still sometimes used to describe this half a millennium from 500-1000 CE. In the Middle East, however, much of this period was marked by the dramatic revival of scholarship based primarily on the works of the major Greek and Latin philosophers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Euclid, Galen, Ptolemy, and others. This occurred primarily in major urban centers such as the Bait al-Hikma ("House of Wisdom") in Baghdad as well as in Cordoba and Toledo in al-Andalus (modern-day Spain), which would later provide the primary entry point as this science and learning filtered back into Europe starting in the 12th century. The only places of comparable developments in Christendom included the Byzantine Empire and the Irish monasteries. However, the former was under almost constant siege from the Islamic East and the latter from Viking marauders, to contribute anything much in the way of major scholarship. The later Western European revival of learning in 12th century universities and then again during the Italian Renaissance, in many ways, owes their existence to the works of Islamic scholars such as Avicenna and Averroes.
The Marginalization Theory was given its modern form by the 19th century French philosopher of science Pierre Duhem, who claimed that it was primarily the Roman Catholic Church that fostered the development of Western science and was among the first to claim that the Later Middle Ages was a period of vast growth in scientific, especially mathematical and statistical, knowledge. Duhem essentially ignored the major contributions of Islamic science, claiming that they were not of any use in the study of the history of science as they were mere passive receptors of Greek science, incubating them for later discovery by the West. The theory was not combated for a number of years until the publication in the mid-20th century of A.I. Sabra's influential work, "The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam" in which he argued that Islam was a creative force in science and that not only did it influence Western science but was the primary influence from the 12th century until at least the Italian Renaissance. Among the many original Islamic contributions to science include: the most extensive and accurate star catalog since the time of Ptolemy in the 2nd century and until Tycho Brahe's of the 16th century, the creation of modern numerical and mathematical notation (adapted and enhanced from an Indian system, and introducing for the first time decimal notation, non-Euclidean geometry, and frequency analysis), rudimentary refrigeration and indoor plumbing, the first recorded concept of communicability of disease and possibly the first conception of vaccines, the creation of algebra (from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning "calculation"), several works on the nature of light and optics, and the first use of something resembling the modern experimental scientific method and peer review systems. Some more daring scholars have even suggested that they may have even, in slightly more primitive fashion, contemplated the heliocentric model of the solar system, the laws of gravitation, and calculus several centuries before Newton and Copernicus.
The Appropriation Theory of A.I. Sabra became mainstream and accepted amongst most historians of science in the last few decades thanks in large part to the works of David C. Lindbergh and Ronald Numbers, who have argued in favor of the work, not only of Islamic science in preserving and adding to Greco-Roman knowledge in the West, but also of religious institutions in general, including the Catholic Church, for laying the groundwork for later scientific advances. During the first half of the 20th century, the study of the relationship between science and religion, especially before the Age of Enlightenment, generally took a dim view of the latter, stating that it was the medieval dominance of the Church that set back the Western advancement of knowledge for nearly 1000 years. And, while most scholars did not outright deny the Church's trenchant dogmatism and blatant censorship of heretical ideas, the indebtedness to the Church in the West as the only stable institution from the fall of the Roman Empire to the rise of national monarchies is the 15th and 16th centuries is a fact too important to overlook. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the Islamic Golden Age came to an end in these same centuries as their European territories in Spain and Portugal asserted their independence and Arab territories across the Middle East shrank from the onslaught of Turks from the north and Mongols from the East.
It is a testament to the impartiality of academia that, in our modern political climate and culture of "Islamaphobia," the greatness of the history of Islamic learning is acknowledged. Very few modern scholars outright deny the augmentations made to science by the Islamic Golden Age, though the degree and nature of this contribution is constantly questioned and debated. Some notable exceptions include the popular (populist?) historian Thomas Cahill, who, while not truly denying the role Muslims have played, relegates them to the sidelines and claims almost propogandistically that the major contributions were made by medieval Irish monks working at the fringes of early medieval Europe, and even more so, the eminent Middle Eastern scholar Bernard Lewis, who simply argues against using the term "Islamic science" (any more than we would describe the Scientific Revolution as "Christian science") to describe what were essentially universal achievements. The use of the Appropriation and Marginalization theories of science have more recently been applied to our own modern era, with the general consensus that our "technologically-laden" society certainly falls into the realm of Appropriation, as more and more academic knowledge is applied towards technology, but it has also been described as Marginalized in the sense that science has become so specialized, that not everyone has access to this knowledge.
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