The man who was to keep the torch of scientific humanism alight within early Islamic civilization was born a thousand years after the death of Lucretius, and into a vastly different cultural setting. Nevertheless, in all that Omar Khayyam wrote one can clearly recognize the influence of the great Roman poet, and of the naturalistic Epicureanism that he celebrated. This is doubly remarkable when we recall that, during the centuries between Lucretius and Khayyam, a Dark Age had engulfed and stifled Western Europe. The spread of a mystical form of religion throughout the remnants of the Roman empire, combined with the influence of the Germanic tribes, had gradually produced what amounted to a reversion to barbarism. Gullibility and ignorance pervaded life at all levels, while economic activity declined to primitive levels of barter. An attitude of contempt for earthly existence and bodily pleasures had become the norm, along with belief in all manner of superstition and magic.
             Southward and eastward, however, two different cultural patterns had emerged. One was the Byzantine Empire -- populated by Hellenized Central Asians: Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Armenians, Egyptians and Persians. It existed as a static, class-dominated, authoritarian society, with change occurring only in extreme form and imposed from without. Yet, by the sheer fact of its existence, in those first cruel centuries following the fall of Rome, this remnant of the ancient civilizations performed a critical holding action for human culture. Within it were preserved many of the achievements of the Hellenic and Classical world. Then, in the seventh century, came the emergence of a new religion among the Arabs and Bedouins to the south, sparking a civilization which eventually encompassed and surpassed what little there had been of original Byzantine achievement.
             Mohammed, the founder of Islam, became at the same time the founder of a new Arabic state with its capital at M...