the 'islamic' time standardization institute

For those of you who does not know the reknowned turkish novel writer ahmet hamdi tanpınar and his witty work the time regulation institute, the joke in the title of our yet again turkish plagiarism story, will be lost.

in his famous book tanpınar criticises the superficial hence ala turca attempts of modernization via the all too important 'time regulation institute' and the story of the individuals who use the time regulation concepts to further their personal agenda.

well it finally happened. and sometimes reality is stranger and funnier than fiction.

mustafa helvacı, an astronomer in ankara university starts working in the religion ministry in turkey as an astronomer, since prayer time regulation is very important and one of the main tasks of the ministry: 'the standardisation of prayer times and calendars.' later he used his internal knowledge and possible contracts to acquire a scholarship for research on 'the orbital motion of moon.'

but apparently he used the money to conduct his own research on circumstellar dust around asymptotic giant branch stars. 4 years later in 2001 he came back to turkey supposing he got his degree on the 'moon orbits,' and for some reason he later got another degree in astronomy from his department on dust around AGB stars in 2003.

funny part is he has been personal advisor to former minister current president abdullah gül, and he continued his work in various government institutions due to his connections with the rising islamist party.

it was published on an article today on the 'republican' (read opposition to the islamists in turkey) newspaper. it mentions, the majority of the work is in web and have been done by the astronomers. i could not find the actual reference but i will get to the bottom of it. i will not be surprised that it was an astronomer collective action.

anyhow here is helvacı's information in ankara university website, from his kentucky connection and research papers in ads.

corrupting germany through history of islamic astronomy

turkey is a great experiment of and case study for modernism in early twentieth century. i think "the little prince" is a book that is translated to most languages, and it perfectly captures the zeitgeist, with a footnote on turkish modernism. the asteroid of the little prince is discovered by a turkish astronomer but western audiences do not believe him due to his clothing, till a turkish dictator makes a law for clothing and with the switch of clothing the turkish astronomers ideas suddenly become acceptable (check it out yourself).

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.

Grown-ups are like that...

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

for me this is a perfect example about how the perception of science as empirical, rational and progressive is misplaced. the current problems of science of course is not effected by things like dress code but rather community connections due center periphery relations, which puts the scientists of peripherial countries into a disadvantageous positions.

a bold proposition coming from a well respected western scientist is more likely to be accepted in the scientific community, rather than it coming from an outsider.

this shows there is a certain aspect of habitus culture in the community of science, to form collaborations and apply for grants, we abide by unwritten rules of communication. although it creates hindrances for the outsiders, it is not by itself such a bad thing but rather a fact.

as a scientist who wants to change the sexist and racist practices of science, and destroy the market oriented transformation aspect of it, my solution is to show the cultural aspect of science and learning science.

ok, my rationalizations are sometimes an overkill i admit. here is what i am doing as a practice, i will be giving a talk in mannheim (which supposedly has the most fraction of inhabitants with turkish background) and a giving a talk in the planetarium about history of islamic science.

it is called islamic science, since back at those days there were no nations and the culture was dominated by islam, the language of science was arabic. science was conducted intercontinentally, and most importantly the switch from greek idealism to empiricism happened during middle age, in an islamic geography.

i believe, like the change of our clothes, the switch in language was made in hopes of a paradigmatic shift in the minds of the masses, in effect only caused us to be severed from our history. the history of science we learn is written by west, completely disregarding the middle age transition from ancient greek concepts to enlightenment. in our history islam is disdained as backward and dogmatic.



it might be, but only the institution of the religion; not the culture of it, which included all colors of heterodoxy, and richness of literature, science and logic; even literary analysis of kur'an.

in summary i will talk about vahdeti mevcut as a basis form empirical research, i will talk about geometry, spherical trigonometry, first analog computers and more importantly the attempts to topple ptolemaic universe.