Excerpt from Atomic Theory
Clark Benson
Atoms in the Islamic Golden Age
4 A few hundred years later, in the eleventh century, the Islamic world was experiencing
its "Golden Age." During this time, the Islamic world made great advances in science,
medicine, and early technology. Many of the advances were further developments of
theories and ideas taken from ancient Greek and Indian civilizations, including atomic
theory. As the ancient Indian culture had done, the early Islamic world also tied religion to
thoughts on the nature of matter. The ties to religion led to theological schools
conducting research of their own on the subject. Al-Gazali, a notable theologian from the
time, was one of the earliest ancient thinkers to propose the idea that there was the
possibility of particles smaller than an atom.
Which of these is the BEST description of the main idea of paragraph four?