ABSTRACT
Historians of science have frequently stressed the significance of the transmission of the Greek and especially Hellenistic heritage into Arabic for the history of scientific thought, until the eighteenth century at least. They have not waited until now to appreciate the importance of this phenomenon for Arabic, Hellenistic and Latin sciences. The emergence of Arabic science itself is incomprehensible unless one refers to the reception of its Greek heritage; nor can one hope to reach a full understanding of the achievements of Greek science itself without the substantial part that has survived only in Arabic, as for example, Apollonius and Diophantus. The same holds for the history of the relationship between Greek and Latin science whose understanding requires the examination of Greek texts translated into Arabic and then into Latin.
