Who was Ibn al-Haytham - Ibn Al-Haytham

Watched some episodes of COSMOS: A Space Time Odyssey from 2014 via Roku, yesterday. Tubi provides free access to some of the programs in the series. They are already somewhat outdated - even so well worth watching.

In COSMOS: A Space Time Odyssey, "A Sky Full of Ghosts", as usual Neal de Grasse Tyson did a good job of communicating the magnitude of some of the background work that has lead to modern day astrophysics. I truly appreciate that he gives credit where credit is due to the giants in the field - how their discoveries and work have been vital to subsequent work.

In this particular episode Tyson spoke of Ibn al-Hazen who lived during the 11th century. That Tyson made an effort to learn about the work of scientists of Medieval times is of value and impressive, imo.

Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham. was simply known as al-Hazen in "the west" (Europe during the the Medieval era) by those who studied his work. He has long been recognized as an astronomer and mathematician who is the father of modern optics. He also made the first known Camera Obsura.

Because of an bad experience in a History of Science class in 1990, where the instructor denied there were no scientists between Ancient Greece and the Renaissance, because the scientific method was not being used, I really appreciated the way Tyson spoke of al-Hazen.

As Tyson pointed out, one of Al-Hazen's first contributions to academia was that light travels in a straight line.

Tyson also noted that al-Hazen's biggest achievement was being "the first person to set down the rule of science by teaching an error correcting process - a systematic and relentless way to sift out misconceptions in our thinking". As Tyson tells us, Al-Hazen taught:
*Finding truth is difficult.
*As seekers of the truth you would be wise to withhold judgement.
*Do not simply put trust in the writings of the ancients.
*You must question and critically exam those writings from every side.
*You must submit only to argument and experiment and not to the sayings of any person.
*Every human being is vulnerable to all kinds of imperfections.
*As seekers of the truth we must also suspect and question our own ideas as we perform our investigations to avoid falling into prejudice or careless thinking.

How could anyone not recognize that what al-Haytham taught in the 11th century was the "scientific method" used at the time which evolved over time, but has remained true to that foundation?