The Church, in the meanwhile, does her best to refute the "ungodly scientific teachings" of the Moors and Jews. The argument of the "Sohar" that the earth revolves upon its own axis and around the sun (a Jewish teaching in the twelfth century, anticipating that of Copernicus), the shining lights of the church nail to the ground with clinchers from the Bible such as these: "The sun runneth about from one end of the heaven to the other," and "the foundations of the earth are so firmly fixed that they cannot be moved." The absurdity of the existence of the antipodes they prove to their full satisfaction in this manner: "It is impossible that any inhabitants exist on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by Scriptures among the descendants of Adam." Again, "we are told by St. Paul that all men are made to live '_upon_ the face of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they can not live upon more faces than one or upon the back." Again, "how could men exist on the other side of the earth, since on the day of judgment, being on the other side, they could not see the Lord ascending through the air?" Ergo, the teachings of the Church alone are the true theories of this universe, "concerning which it is not lawful for a Christian to doubt." But the Moors and Jews treated with contempt this puerile opposition, little thinking that the Church of "Love unto all men" has stronger and more convincing weapons than tongue and pen to prove her points. They persevered in their path so well begun. They turned to the physical sciences. They originated chemistry. They discovered some of the most important reagents, such as the nitric, sulphuric and hydrochloric acids, and alcohol, which still bears its Arabic name. They knew the chemical affinities of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead and quicksilver. They invented various apparatus for distillation, sublimation, fusion, filtration, etc. They constructed tables of specific gravities. In geology, Abu Othman wrote a valuable work. In zoology, the following extract from a chapter of Avicenna (Ibn Sinai or Ben Sinai) on the origin of the mountains, which reads as if it were written by one of the most advanced geologists of our day, will best indicate the heights to which they attained in this science. "Mountains" said Ibn Sinai (980-1037), "may be due to two different causes. Either they are upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effects of water, which, cutting for itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds--some soft, some hard. The winds and waters disintegrate the one, but leave the other intact. That water has been the main cause of these facts is proved by the existence of fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on many mountains."[25]