Ibn Sina (Persian: ابن
سینا), also known as Abu Ali Sina (ابوعلی سینا), Pur Sina (پورسینا), and often
known in the west as Avicenna (/ˌævɪˈsɛnə, ˌɑːvɪ-/;
c. 980 – June 1037) was
a Persian Muslim polymath who is regarded as one of the
most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of
the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of modern
medicine. Avicenna is also called "the most influential philosopher
of the pre-modern era". Of the 450 works he is believed to have
written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on
medicine.
His most famous works
are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific
encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical
encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many
medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In 1973,
Avicenna's Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York.
Besides philosophy and
medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings
on astronomy, alchemy, geography and
geology, psychology, Islamic
theology, logic, mathematics, physics and works
of poetry.
Avicenna is
a Latin corruption of the Arabic
patronym ibn Sīnā (ابن سينا), meaning
"Son of Sina". However, Avicenna was not the son but the
great-great-grandson of a man named Sina. His formal Arabic name was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbdillāh ibn
al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā (أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن الحسن بن علي بن سينا).
Circumstances
Ibn Sina created an extensive corpus of works during what is commonly known
as the Islamic Golden Age, in which the translations of Greco-Roman, Persian,
and Indian texts were studied extensively. Greco-Roman (Mid- and Neo-Platonic,
and Aristotelian) texts translated by the Kindi school were commented, redacted
and developed substantially by Islamic intellectuals, who also built upon
Persian and Indian mathematical systems, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry and
medicine. The Samanid dynasty in the eastern part of Persia, Greater Khorasan
and Central Asia as well as the Buyid dynasty in the western part of Persia and
Iraq provided a thriving atmosphere for scholarly and cultural development.
Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad as a cultural capital of the
Islamic world. There, the study of the Quran and the Hadith thrived.
Philosophy, Fiqh and theology (kalaam) were further developed, most noticeably
by Avicenna and his opponents. Al-Razi and Al-Farabi had provided methodology
and knowledge in medicine and philosophy. Avicenna had access to the great
libraries of Balkh, Khwarezm, Gorgan, Rey, Isfahan and Hamadan. Various texts
(such as the 'Ahd with Bahmanyar) show that he debated philosophical points
with the greatest scholars of the time. Aruzi Samarqandi describes how before
Avicenna left Khwarezm he had met Al-Biruni (a famous scientist and
astronomer), Abu Nasr Iraqi (a renowned mathematician), Abu Sahl Masihi (a
respected philosopher) and Abu al-Khayr Khammar (a great physician).
Biography
Early
life
Avicenna was born c. 980 in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in
present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a
Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan.
His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a
respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of
the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh
Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government
of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional
power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first
began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he
was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
According to his
autobiography, Avicenna had memorised the entire Quran by the age of
10. He learned Indian arithmetic from
an Indian greengrocer, Mahmoud Massahi and he began to learn
more from a wandering scholar who gained a livelihood by curing the sick and
teaching the young. He also studied Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)
under the Sunni Hanafi scholar Ismail al-Zahid. Avicenna
was taught some extent of philosophy books such as Introduction
(Isagoge)'s Porphyry (philosopher), Euclid's
Elements, Ptolemy's Almagest by an unpopular philosopher, Abu
Abdullah Nateli, who claimed philosophizing.
As a teenager, he was
greatly troubled by the Metaphysics of Aristotle, which
he could not understand until he read al-Farabi's commentary on the
work. For the next year and a half, he studied philosophy, in which he
encountered greater obstacles. In such moments of baffled inquiry, he would
leave his books, perform the requisite ablutions, then go to the mosque,
and continue in prayer till light broke on his difficulties. Deep
into the night, he would continue his studies, and even in his dreams problems
would pursue him and work out their solution. Forty times, it is said, he read
through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were
imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure to him until
he purchased a brief commentary by al-Farabi from a bookstall for three dirhams
(a very low price at the time). So great was his joy at the discovery, made
with the help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he
hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed alms upon the poor.
He turned to medicine
at 16, and not only learned medical theory, but also by gratuitous attendance
of the sick had, according to his own account, discovered new methods of
treatment. The teenager achieved full status as a qualified physician at
age 18, and found that "Medicine is no hard and thorny science, like
mathematics and metaphysics, so I soon made great progress; I became an
excellent doctor and began to treat patients, using approved remedies."
The youthful physician's fame spread quickly, and he treated many patients
without asking for payment.
A number of theories
have been proposed regarding Avicenna's madhab (school of thought
within Islamic jurisprudence). Medieval historian Ẓahīr al-dīn al-Bayhaqī (d.
1169) considered Avicenna to be a follower of the Brethren of
Purity. On the other hand, Dimitri Gutas along with Aisha Khan
and Jules J. Janssens demonstrated that Avicenna was
a Sunni Hanafi. However, the 14th
century Shia faqih Nurullah Shushtari according
to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, maintained that he was most likely a Twelver
Shia. Conversely, Sharaf Khorasani, citing a rejection of an invitation of
the Sunni Governor Sultan Mahmoud Ghazanavi by Avicenna to his court, believes
that Avicenna was an Ismaili. Similar disagreements exist on the
background of Avicenna's family, whereas some writers considered them Sunni, some
more recent writers contested that they were Shia.
Adulthood
A drawing of Avicenna
Avicenna's first
appointment was that of physician to the emir, Nuh II, who owed him
his recovery from a dangerous illness (997). Ibn Sina's chief reward for this
service was access to the royal library of the Samanids, well-known patrons of
scholarship and scholars. When the library was destroyed by fire not long
after, the enemies of Ibn Sina accused him of burning it, in order for ever to
conceal the sources of his knowledge. Meanwhile, he assisted his father in his
financial labors, but still found time to write some of his earliest works.
At 22 years old,
Avicenna lost his father. The Samanid dynasty came to its end in December 1004.
Avicenna seems to have declined the offers of Mahmud of Ghazni, and
proceeded westwards to Urgench in modern Turkmenistan, where
the vizier, regarded as a friend of scholars, gave him a small monthly
stipend. The pay was small, however, so Ibn Sina wandered from place to place
through the districts of Nishapur and Merv to the borders
of Khorasan, seeking an opening for his talents. Qabus, the generous
ruler of Tabaristan, himself a poet and a scholar, with whom Ibn Sina had
expected to find asylum, was on about that date (1012) starved to death by his
troops who had revolted. Avicenna himself was at this time stricken by a severe
illness. Finally, at Gorgan, near the Caspian Sea, Avicenna met with
a friend, who bought a dwelling near his own house in which Avicenna lectured
on logic and astronomy. Several of his treatises were written
for this patron; and the commencement of his Canon of Medicine also
dates from his stay in Hyrcania.
Avicenna subsequently
settled at Rey, in the vicinity of modern Tehran, the home town
of Rhazes; where Majd Addaula, a son of the
last Buwayhid emir, was nominal ruler under the regency of his mother
(Seyyedeh Khatun). About thirty of Ibn Sina's shorter works are said to have
been composed in Rey. Constant feuds which raged between the regent and her
second son, Shams al-Daula, however, compelled the scholar to quit the
place. After a brief sojourn at Qazvin he passed southwards to
Hamadãn where Shams al-Daula, another Buwayhid emir, had established himself.
At first, Ibn Sina entered into the service of a high-born lady; but the emir,
hearing of his arrival, called him in as medical attendant, and sent him back
with presents to his dwelling. Ibn Sina was even raised to the office of
vizier. The emir decreed that he should be banished from the country. Ibn Sina,
however, remained hidden for forty days in sheikh Ahmed Fadhel's house, until a
fresh attack of illness induced the emir to restore him to his post. Even
during this perturbed time, Ibn Sina persevered with his studies and teaching.
Every evening, extracts from his great works, the Canon and
the Sanatio, were dictated and explained to his pupils. On the
death of the emir, Ibn Sina ceased to be vizier and hid himself in the house of
an apothecary, where, with intense assiduity, he continued the composition
of his works.
Meanwhile, he had
written to Abu Ya'far, the prefect of the dynamic city of Isfahan,
offering his services. The new emir of Hamadan, hearing of this correspondence
and discovering where Ibn Sina was hiding, incarcerated him in a fortress. War
meanwhile continued between the rulers of Isfahan and Hamadãn; in 1024 the
former captured Hamadan and its towns, expelling the Tajik mercenaries. When
the storm had passed, Ibn Sina returned with the emir to Hamadan, and carried
on his literary labors. Later, however, accompanied by his brother, a favorite
pupil, and two slaves, Ibn Sina escaped from the city in the dress of
a Sufi ascetic. After a perilous journey, they reached Isfahan,
receiving an honorable welcome from the prince.
Later
life and death
The first page of a manuscript of Avicenna's Canon,
dated 1596/7 (Yale, Medical Historical Library,
Cushing Arabic ms. 5)
Gravestone of
Avicenna, Hamedan, Iran
The remaining ten or
twelve years of Ibn Sīnā's life were spent in the service of
the Kakuyid ruler Muhammad ibn Rustam Dushmanziyar (also
known as Ala al-Dawla), whom he accompanied as physician and general literary
and scientific adviser, even in his numerous campaigns.
During these years he
began to study literary matters and philology, instigated, it is asserted,
by criticisms on his style. A severe colic, which seized him on the march
of the army against Hamadan, was checked by remedies so violent that Ibn Sina
could scarcely stand. On a similar occasion the disease returned; with
difficulty he reached Hamadan, where, finding the disease gaining ground, he
refused to keep up the regimen imposed, and resigned himself to his fate.
His friends advised him
to slow down and take life moderately. He refused, however, stating that: "I
prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length". On
his deathbed remorse seized him; he bestowed his goods on the poor, restored
unjust gains, freed his slaves, and read through the Quran every
three days until his death. He died in June 1037, in his fifty-eighth year,
in the month of Ramadan and was buried in Hamadan, Iran.
Philosophy
Ibn Sīnā wrote
extensively on early Islamic philosophy, especially the
subjects logic, ethics, and metaphysics, including treatises
named Logic and Metaphysics. Most of his works
were written in Arabic – then the language of science in the
Middle East – and some in Persian. Of linguistic significance even to
this day are a few books that he wrote in nearly pure Persian language
(particularly the Danishnamah-yi 'Ala', Philosophy for Ala' ad-Dawla'). Ibn
Sīnā's commentaries on Aristotle often criticized the
philosopher, encouraging a lively debate in the spirit of ijtihad.
Avicenna's Neoplatonic scheme
of "emanations" became fundamental in the Kalam (school
of theological discourse) in the 12th century.
His Book of
Healing became available in Europe in partial Latin translation some
fifty years after its composition, under the title Sufficientia,
and some authors have identified a "Latin Avicennism" as flourishing
for some time, paralleling the more influential Latin Averroism, but
suppressed by the Parisian decrees of 1210 and 1215.
Avicenna's psychology
and theory of knowledge influenced William of Auvergne, Bishop of
Paris and Albertus Magnus, while his metaphysics influenced the
thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Metaphysical
doctrine
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Early Islamic
philosophy and Islamic metaphysics, imbued as it is with Islamic
theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism between essence and
existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the
accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. The philosophy
of Ibn Sīnā, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to
al-Farabi. The search for a definitive Islamic philosophy separate
from Occasionalism can be seen in what is left of his work.
Following al-Farabi's
lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in
which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud).
He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for
by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves
cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive
actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to
an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence
to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with
its effect.
Avicenna's
consideration of the essence-attributes question may be elucidated in terms of
his ontological analysis of the modalities of being; namely impossibility,
contingency, and necessity. Avicenna argued that the impossible being is that
which cannot exist, while the contingent in itself (mumkin bi-dhatihi)
has the potentiality to be or not to be without entailing a contradiction. When
actualized, the contingent becomes a 'necessary existent due to what is other
than itself' (wajib al-wujud bi-ghayrihi). Thus, contingency-in-itself
is potential beingness that could eventually be actualized by an external cause
other than itself. The metaphysical structures of necessity and contingency are
different. Necessary being due to itself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi) is
true in itself, while the contingent being is 'false in itself' and 'true due
to something else other than itself'. The necessary is the source of its own
being without borrowed existence. It is what always exists.
The Necessary exists
'due-to-Its-Self', and has no quiddity/essence (mahiyya) other than
existence (wujud). Furthermore, It is 'One' (wahid ahad) since
there cannot be more than one 'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' without
differentia (fasl) to distinguish them from each other. Yet, to require
differentia entails that they exist 'due-to-themselves' as well as 'due to what
is other than themselves'; and this is contradictory. However, if no
differentia distinguishes them from each other, then there is no sense in which
these 'Existents' are not one and the same. Avicenna adds that the
'Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself' has no genus (jins), nor a definition
(hadd), nor a counterpart (nadd), nor an opposite (did),
and is detached (bari) from matter (madda), quality (kayf),
quantity (kam), place (ayn), situation (wad), and time (waqt).
Avicenna's theology on
metaphysical issues (ilāhiyyāt) has been criticized by some Islamic
scholars, among them al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn
al-Qayyim. While discussing the views of the theists among the Greek
philosophers, namely Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle in Al-Munqidh min ad-Dalal ("Deliverance
from Error"), al-Ghazali noted that the Greek philosophers "must be
taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers,
such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi and their likes." He added that "None,
however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle's
lore as did the two men just mentioned. [...] The sum of what we regard as the
authentic philosophy of Aristotle, as transmitted by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina,
can be reduced to three parts: a part which must be branded as unbelief; a part
which must be stigmatized as innovation; and a part which need not be repudiated
at all.
Argument
for God's existence
Avicenna made
an argument for the existence of God which would be known
as the "Proof of the Truthful" (Arabic: al-burhan al-siddiqin).
Avicenna argued that there must be a "necessary existent"
(Arabic: wajib al-wujud), an entity that cannot not exist and
through a series of arguments, he identified it with the Islamic
conception of God. Present-day historian of philosophy Peter
Adamson called this argument one of the most influential medieval
arguments for God's existence, and Avicenna's biggest contribution to the
history of philosophy.
Al-Biruni
correspondence.
Correspondence between
Ibn Sina (with his student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi)
and Al-Biruni has survived in which they
debated Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic
school. Abu Rayhan began by asking Avicenna eighteen questions, ten of which were
criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens.
Theology
Avicenna was a devout
Muslim and sought to reconcile rational philosophy with Islamic theology. His
aim was to prove the existence of God and His creation of the world
scientifically and through reason and logic. Avicenna's
views on Islamic theology (and philosophy) were enormously influential, forming
part of the core of the curriculum at Islamic religious schools until the 19th
century. Avicenna wrote a number of short treatises dealing with Islamic
theology. These included treatises on the prophets (whom he viewed as
"inspired philosophers"), and also on various scientific and philosophical
interpretations of the Quran, such as how
Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own philosophical system. In
general these treatises linked his philosophical writings to Islamic religious
ideas; for example, the body's afterlife.
There are occasional
brief hints and allusions in his longer works however that Avicenna considered
philosophy as the only sensible way to distinguish real prophecy from illusion.
He did not state this more clearly because of the political implications of
such a theory, if prophecy could be questioned, and also because most of the
time he was writing shorter works which concentrated on explaining his theories
on philosophy and theology clearly, without digressing to
consider epistemological matters which could only be properly
considered by other philosophers.
Later interpretations
of Avicenna's philosophy split into three different schools; those (such
as al-Tusi) who continued to apply his philosophy as a system to interpret
later political events and scientific advances; those (such as al-Razi) who
considered Avicenna's theological works in isolation from his wider
philosophical concerns; and those (such as al-Ghazali) who selectively
used parts of his philosophy to support their own attempts to gain greater
spiritual insights through a variety of mystical means. It was the theological
interpretation championed by those such as al-Razi which eventually came to
predominate in the madrasahs.
Avicenna memorized
the Quran by the age of ten, and as an adult, he wrote five treatises
commenting on suras from the Quran. One of these texts included
the Proof of Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic
verses and holds the Quran in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic
prophets should be considered higher than philosophers.
Thought
experiments
While he was imprisoned
in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna wrote his famous
"Floating Man" – literally falling man – thought
experiment to demonstrate human self-awareness and the
substantiality and immateriality of the soul. Avicenna believed his
"Floating Man" thought experiment demonstrated that the soul is a
substance, and claimed humans cannot doubt their own consciousness, even in a
situation that prevents all sensory data input. The thought experiment told its
readers to imagine themselves created all at once while suspended in the air,
isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even
their own bodies. He argued that, in this scenario, one would still
have self-consciousness. Because it is conceivable that a person,
suspended in air while cut off from sense experience, would still be
capable of determining his own existence, the thought experiment points to the conclusions
that the soul is a perfection, independent of the body, and an immaterial
substance. The conceivability of this "Floating Man" indicates
that the soul is perceived intellectually, which entails the soul's
separateness from the body. Avicenna referred to the living
human intelligence, particularly the active intellect, which he
believed to be the hypostasis by which God
communicates truth to the human mind and imparts order and
intelligibility to nature. Following is an English translation of the argument:
One of us (i.e. a human
being) should be imagined as having been created in a single stroke; created
perfect and complete but with his vision obscured so that he cannot perceive
external entities; created falling through air or a void, in such a manner that
he is not struck by the firmness of the air in any way that compels him to feel
it, and with his limbs separated so that they do not come in contact with or
touch each other. Then contemplate the following: can he be assured of the
existence of himself? He does not have any doubt in that his self exists,
without thereby asserting that he has any exterior limbs, nor any internal
organs, neither heart nor brain, nor any one of the exterior things at all; but
rather he can affirm the existence of himself, without thereby asserting there
that this self has any extension in space. Even if it were possible for him in
that state to imagine a hand or any other limb, he would not imagine it as
being a part of his self, nor as a condition for the existence of that self;
for as you know that which is asserted is different from that which is not
asserted and that which is inferred is different from that which is not
inferred. Therefore the self, the existence of which has been asserted, is a
unique characteristic, in as much that it is not as such the same as the body
or the limbs, which have not been ascertained. Thus that which is ascertained
(i.e. the self), does have a way of being sure of the existence of the soul as
something other than the body, even something non-bodily; this he knows, this
he should understand intuitively, if it is that he is ignorant of it and needs
to be beaten with a stick [to realize it].
— Ibn Sina, Kitab Al-Shifa, On the Soul
However, Avicenna
posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation
prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent
Intellect. The first knowledge of the flying person would be "I am,"
affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as
the flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that "I am"
is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. Avicenna
thus concluded that the idea of the self is not logically dependent
on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen
in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. The body is
unnecessary; in relation to it, the soul is its perfection. In itself, the
soul is an immaterial substance.
The Canon of Medicine
12th-century manuscript of the Canon,
kept at the Azerbaijan National Academy of
Sciences.
Avicenna authored a
five-volume medical encyclopedia: The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun
fi't-Tibb). It was used as the standard medical textbook in the Islamic
world and Europe up to the 18th century. The Canon still
plays an important role in Unani medicine.
Liber Primus Naturalium
Avicenna considered
whether events like rare diseases or disorders have natural causes. He
used the example of polydactyly to explain his perception that causal
reasons exist for all medical events. This view of medical phenomena
anticipated developments in the Enlightenment by seven centuries.
The Book of Healing
This section should include only a brief summary of The Book of Healing.
See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to properly incorporate it
into this article's main text. (July 2016)
Earth
sciences
Ibn Sīnā wrote
on Earth sciences such as geology in The Book of
Healing. While discussing the formation of mountains, he
explained:
Either they are the
effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a
violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a
new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some
soft, some hard ... It would require a long period of time for all such
changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be
somewhat diminished in size.
Philosophy
of science
In the Al-Burhan (On Demonstration) section
of The Book of Healing, Avicenna discussed the philosophy of
science and described an early scientific
method of inquiry. He discusses Aristotle's Posterior
Analytics and significantly diverged from it on several points.
Avicenna discussed the issue of a proper methodology for scientific inquiry and
the question of "How does one acquire the first principles of a
science?" He asked how a scientist would arrive at "the
initial axioms or hypotheses of
a deductive science without inferring them from some more basic
premises?" He explains that the ideal situation is when one grasps that a
"relation holds between the terms, which would allow for absolute,
universal certainty". Avicenna then adds two further methods for arriving
at the first principles: the ancient Aristotelian method of induction (istiqra),
and the method of examination and experimentation (tajriba).
Avicenna criticized Aristotelian induction, arguing that "it does not lead
to the absolute, universal, and certain premises that it purports to
provide." In its place, he develops a "method of experimentation as a
means for scientific inquiry."
Logic
An early formal system
of temporal logic was studied by Avicenna. Although he did not
develop a real theory of temporal propositions, he did study the relationship
between temporalis and the implication. Avicenna's work
was further developed by Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī and became
the dominant system of Islamic logic until modern
times. Avicennian logic also influenced several early European logicians
such as Albertus Magnus and William of Ockham. Avicenna
endorsed the law of noncontradiction proposed by Aristotle, that a fact could
not be both true and false at the same time and in the same sense of the
terminology used. He stated, "Anyone who denies the law of
noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten
is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to
be burned."
Physics
In mechanics, Ibn
Sīnā, in The Book of Healing, developed a theory of motion, in
which he made a distinction between the inclination (tendency to motion)
and force of a projectile, and concluded that motion was a
result of an inclination (mayl) transferred to the projectile by the
thrower, and that projectile motion in a vacuum would not
cease. He viewed inclination as a permanent force whose effect is
dissipated by external forces such as air resistance.
The theory of motion
presented by Avicenna was probably influenced by the 6th-century Alexandrian
scholar John Philoponus. Avicenna's is a less sophisticated variant of
the theory of impetus developed by Buridan in the 14th
century. It is unclear if Buridan was influenced by Avicenna, or by Philoponus
directly.
In optics, Ibn
Sina was among those who argued that light had a speed, observing that "if
the perception of light is due to the emission of some sort
of particles by a luminous source, the speed of light must be finite." He
also provided a wrong explanation of
the rainbow phenomenon. Carl Benjamin Boyer described
Avicenna's ("Ibn Sīnā") theory on the rainbow as follows:
Independent observation
had demonstrated to him that the bow is not formed in the dark cloud but rather
in the very thin mist lying between the cloud and the sun or observer. The
cloud, he thought, serves simply as the background of this thin substance, much
as a quicksilver lining is placed upon the rear surface of the glass in a
mirror. Ibn Sīnā would change the place not only of the bow, but also of the
color formation, holding the iridescence to be merely a subjective sensation in
the eye.
In 1253, a Latin text
entitled Speculum Tripartitum stated the following regarding
Avicenna's theory on heat:
Avicenna says in his
book of heaven and earth, that heat is generated from motion in external
things.
Psychology
Avicenna's legacy in
classical psychology is primarily embodied in the Kitab al-nafs parts
of his Kitab al-shifa (The Book of Healing) and Kitab
al-najat (The Book of Deliverance). These were known in Latin
under the title De Anima (treatises "on the
soul"). Notably, Avicenna develops what is called the Flying
Man argument in the Psychology of The Cure I.1.7 as
defense of the argument that the soul is without quantitative extension, which
has an affinity with Descartes's cogito argument (or
what phenomenology designates as a form of an "epoche").
Avicenna's psychology
requires that connection between the body and soul be strong enough to ensure
the soul's individuation, but weak enough to allow for its immortality.
Avicenna grounds his psychology on physiology, which means his account of the
soul is one that deals almost entirely with the natural science of the body and
its abilities of perception. Thus, the philosopher's connection between the
soul and body is explained almost entirely by his understanding of perception;
in this way, bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human intellect.
In sense perception, the perceiver senses the form of the object; first, by
perceiving features of the object by our external senses. This sensory
information is supplied to the internal senses, which merge all the pieces into
a whole, unified conscious experience. This process of perception and
abstraction is the nexus of the soul and body, for the material body may only
perceive material objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the
immaterial, universal forms. The way the soul and body interact in the final
abstraction of the universal from the concrete particular is the key to their
relationship and interaction, which takes place in the physical body.
The soul completes the
action of intellection by accepting forms that have been abstracted from
matter. This process requires a concrete particular (material) to be abstracted
into the universal intelligible (immaterial). The material and immaterial
interact through the Active Intellect, which is a "divine light"
containing the intelligible forms. The Active Intellect reveals the
universals concealed in material objects much like the sun makes color
available to our eyes.
Other
contributions
Astronomy
and astrology
Avicenna wrote an
attack on astrology titled Resāla fī ebṭāl aḥkām al-nojūm, in which
he cited passages from the Quran to dispute the power of astrology to foretell
the future. He believed that each planet had some influence on the earth,
but argued against astrologers being able to determine the exact effects.
Avicenna's astronomical
writings had some influence on later writers, although in general his work
could be considered less developed than Alhazen or Al-Biruni.
One important feature of his writing is that he considers mathematical
astronomy as a separate discipline to astrology. He criticized Aristotle's
view of the stars receiving their light from the Sun, stating
that the stars are self-luminous, and believed that the planets are
also self-luminous. He claimed to have observed Venus as a spot on
the Sun. This is possible, as there was a transit on May 24, 1032, but Avicenna
did not give the date of his observation, and modern scholars have questioned
whether he could have observed the transit from his location at that time; he
may have mistaken a sunspot for Venus. He used his transit observation to help
establish that Venus was, at least sometimes, below the Sun in Ptolemaic
cosmology, i.e. the sphere of Venus comes before the sphere of the Sun
when moving out from the Earth in the prevailing geocentric model.
He also wrote the Summary
of the Almagest, (based on Ptolemy's Almagest), with an
appended treatise "to bring that which is stated in the Almagest and what
is understood from Natural Science into conformity". For example, Avicenna
considers the motion of the solar apogee, which Ptolemy had taken to be
fixed.
Chemistry
Ibn Sīnā
used steam distillation to produce essential oils such as rose
essence, which he used as aromatherapeutic treatments for heart
conditions.
Unlike al-Razi, Ibn
Sīnā explicitly disputed the theory of the transmutation of
substances commonly believed by alchemists:
Those of the chemical
craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of
substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change.
Four works on alchemy
attributed to Avicenna were translated into Latin as:
·
Liber
Aboali Abincine de Anima in arte Alchemiae
·
Declaratio
Lapis physici Avicennae filio sui Aboali
·
Avicennae
de congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum
·
Avicennae
ad Hasan Regem epistola de Re recta
Liber
Aboali Abincine de Anima in arte Alchemiae was the most
influential, having influenced later medieval chemists and alchemists
such as Vincent of Beauvais. However Anawati argues (following Ruska) that
the de Anima is a fake by a Spanish author. Similarly the Declaratio is
believed not to be actually by Avicenna. The third work (The Book of
Minerals) is agreed to be Avicenna's writing, adapted from the Kitab
al-Shifa (Book of the Remedy). Ibn Sina classified
minerals into stones, fusible substances, sulfurs, and salts, building on the
ideas of Aristotle and Jabir. The epistola de Re recta is
somewhat less sceptical of alchemy; Anawati argues that it is by Avicenna, but
written earlier in his career when he had not yet firmly decided that
transmutation was impossible.
Poetry
Almost half of Ibn
Sīnā's works are versified. His poems appear in both Arabic and Persian.
As an example, Edward Granville Browne claims that the following
Persian verses are incorrectly attributed to Omar Khayyám, and were
originally written by Ibn Sīnā:
از قعر گل سیاه تا اوج زحل
کردم همه مشکلات گیتی را حل بیرون جستم زقید هر مکر و حیل هر بند گشاده شد مگر بند اجل |
From the depth of the black earth up to Saturn's apogee,
All the problems of the universe have been solved by me. I have escaped from the coils of snares and deceits; I have unraveled all knots except the knot of Death. |
Legacy
Middle
Ages and Renaissance
Inside view of the Avicenna Mausoleum, designed
by Hooshang Seyhoun in 1945–1950
As early as the 13th
century when Dante Alighieri depicted him in Limbo alongside the
virtuous non-Christian thinkers in his Divine Comedy such
as Virgil, Averroes, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Socrates, Plato,
and Saladin. Avicenna has been recognized by both East and West, as one of
the great figures in intellectual history.
George Sarton, the
author of The History of Science, described Ibn Sīnā as "one
of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history" and called him
"the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous
of all races, places, and times." He was one of the Islamic world's
leading writers in the field of medicine.
Along
with Rhazes, Abulcasis, Ibn al-Nafis, and al-Ibadi, Ibn
Sīnā is considered an important compiler of early Muslim medicine. He is
remembered in the Western history of medicine as a major historical
figure who made important contributions to medicine and the
European Renaissance. His medical texts were unusual in that where
controversy existed between Galen and Aristotle's views on medical matters
(such as anatomy), he preferred to side with Aristotle, where necessary
updating Aristotle's position to take into account post-Aristotelian advances
in anatomical knowledge. Aristotle's dominant intellectual influence among
medieval European scholars meant that Avicenna's linking of Galen's medical
writings with Aristotle's philosophical writings in the Canon of
Medicine (along with its comprehensive and logical organisation of
knowledge) significantly increased Avicenna's importance in medieval Europe in
comparison to other Islamic writers on medicine. His influence following
translation of the Canon was such that from the early
fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries he was ranked with Hippocrates and
Galen as one of the acknowledged authorities, princeps
medicorum ("prince of physicians").
Modern
reception
In present-day Iran,
Afghanistan and Tajikistan, he is considered a national icon, and is often
regarded as among the greatest Persians. A monument was erected outside the
Bukhara museum. The Avicenna Mausoleum and
Museum in Hamadan was built in 1952. Bu-Ali Sina
University in Hamadan (Iran), the biotechnology Avicenna Research
Institute in Tehran (Iran), the ibn Sīnā Tajik State
Medical University in Dushanbe, Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine
and Sciences at Aligarh, India, Avicenna
School in Karachi and Avicenna Medical
College in Lahore, Pakistan, Ibne Sina Balkh Medical School in his
native province of Balkh in Afghanistan, Ibni Sina Faculty Of
Medicine of Ankara University Ankara, Turkey, the main classroom
building (the Avicenna Building) of the Sharif University of Technology,
and Ibn Sina Integrated School in Marawi City (Philippines) are all named in
his honour. His portrait hangs in the Hall of the Avicenna Faculty of Medicine
in the University of Paris. There is a crater on the Moon
named Avicenna and a mangrove genus Avicennia.
A monument to Avicenna
in Qakh (city), Azerbaijan
Avicenna statue
in Milad Tower, Tehran, Iran
In 1980,
the Soviet Union, which then ruled his birthplace Bukhara, celebrated the
thousandth anniversary of Avicenna's birth by circulating
various commemorative stamps with artistic illustrations, and by
erecting a bust of Avicenna based on anthropological research
by Soviet scholars. Near his birthplace in Qishlak Afshona, some
25 km (16 mi) north of Bukhara, a training college for medical staff
has been named for him. On the grounds is a museum dedicated to his life,
times and work.
Image of Avicenna on
the Tajikistani somoni
The Avicenna
Prize, established in 2003, is awarded every two years by UNESCO and
rewards individuals and groups for their achievements in the field of ethics in
science. The aim of the award is to promote ethical reflection on issues raised
by advances in science and technology, and to raise global awareness of the
importance of ethics in science.
The Avicenna
Directories (2008–15; now the World Directory of Medical Schools)
list universities and schools where doctors, public health practitioners,
pharmacists and others, are educated. The original project team stated
"Why Avicenna? Avicenna ... was ... noted for his synthesis of
knowledge from both east and west. He has had a lasting influence on the
development of medicine and health sciences. The use of Avicenna's name
symbolises the worldwide partnership that is needed for the promotion of health
services of high quality."
The statue of Avicenna
in United Nations Office in Vienna as a part of the Persian
Scholars Pavilion donated by Iran
In June 2009, Iran
donated a "Persian Scholars Pavilion" to United Nations Office
in Vienna which is placed in the central Memorial Plaza of the Vienna
International Center. The "Persian Scholars Pavilion" at United
Nations in Vienna, Austria is featuring the statues of four prominent
Iranian figures. Highlighting the Iranian architectural features, the pavilion
is adorned with Persian art forms and includes the statues of renowned Iranian
scientists Avicenna, Al-Biruni, Zakariya Razi (Rhazes)
and Omar Khayyam.
The 1982 Soviet
film Youth of Genius (Russian: Юность
гения, romanized: Yunost geniya) by Elyor
Ishmukhamedov recounts Avicenna's younger years. The film is
set in Bukhara at the turn of the millennium.
In Louis L'Amour's
1985 historical novel The Walking Drum, Kerbouchard studies and
discusses Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine.
In his book The
Physician (1988) Noah Gordon tells the story of a young
English medical apprentice who disguises himself as a Jew to travel from
England to Persia and learn from Avicenna, the great master of his time. The
novel was adapted into a feature film, The Physician, in 2013.
Avicenna was played by Ben Kingsley.
Arabic
works
The treatises of Ibn
Sīnā influenced later Muslim thinkers in many areas including theology,
philology, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and music. His works numbered
almost 450 volumes on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have
survived. In particular, 150 volumes of his surviving works concentrate on
philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works
are The Book of Healing, and The Canon of Medicine.
Ibn Sīnā wrote at least
one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to
him. His Logic, Metaphysics, Physics,
and De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view
of Aristotelian doctrine, though Metaphysics demonstrates
a significant departure from the brand of Neoplatonism known as
Aristotelianism in Ibn Sīnā's world; Arabic philosophers have hinted at
the idea that Ibn Sīnā was attempting to "re-Aristotelianise" Muslim
philosophy in its entirety, unlike his predecessors, who accepted the
conflation of Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo- and Middle-Platonic works
transmitted into the Muslim world.
The Logic and Metaphysics have been extensively reprinted, the latter,
e.g., at Venice in 1493, 1495, and 1546. Some of his shorter essays on
medicine, logic, etc., take a poetical form (the poem on logic was published by
Schmoelders in 1836). Two encyclopedic treatises, dealing with philosophy, are
often mentioned. The larger, Al-Shifa' (Sanatio), exists nearly complete in
manuscript in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima
appeared at Pavia (1490) as the Liber Sextus Naturalium, and the long account
of Ibn Sina's philosophy given by Muhammad al-Shahrastani seems to be mainly an
analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'. A shorter form
of the work is known as the An-najat (Liberatio). The Latin editions of part of
these works have been modified by the corrections which the monastic editors
confess that they applied. There is also a حكمت مشرقيه
(hikmat-al-mashriqqiyya, in Latin Philosophia Orientalis), mentioned by Roger
Bacon, the majority of which is lost in antiquity, which according to Averroes
was pantheistic in tone.
List of
works
Avicenna's works
include:
· Sirat al-shaykh
al-ra'is (The Life of Ibn Sina), ed. and trans. WE. Gohlman, Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1974. (The only critical edition of Ibn
Sina's autobiography, supplemented with material from a biography by his
student Abu 'Ubayd al-Juzjani. A more recent translation of the Autobiography
appears in D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition:
Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works, Leiden: Brill,
1988; second edition 2014.)
· Al-isharat wa
al-tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions), ed. S. Dunya, Cairo, 1960; parts
translated by S.C. Inati, Remarks and Admonitions, Part One: Logic, Toronto,
Ont.: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1984, and Ibn Sina and
Mysticism, Remarks and Admonitions: Part 4, London: Kegan Paul International,
1996.
· Al-Qanun fi'l-tibb (The Canon of
Medicine), ed. I. a-Qashsh, Cairo, 1987. (Encyclopedia of
medicine.) manuscript, Latin translation, Flores
Avicenne, Michael de Capella, 1508, Modern text. Ahmed Shawkat
Al-Shatti, Jibran Jabbur.
·
Risalah fi sirr
al-qadar (Essay on the Secret of Destiny), trans. G. Hourani in Reason
and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
· Danishnama-i 'ala'i (The Book of
Scientific Knowledge), ed. and trans. P. Morewedge, The Metaphysics of
Avicenna, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.
· Kitab al-Shifa' (The Book of
Healing). (Ibn Sina's major work on philosophy. He probably began to
compose al-Shifa' in 1014, and completed it in 1020.) Critical editions of the
Arabic text have been published in Cairo, 1952–83, originally under the
supervision of I. Madkour.
· Kitab al-Najat (The Book of
Salvation), trans. F. Rahman, Avicenna's Psychology: An English
Translation of Kitab al-Najat, Book II, Chapter VI with
Historical-philosophical Notes and Textual Improvements on the Cairo Edition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. (The psychology of al-Shifa'.) (Digital
version of the Arabic text)
· Hayy ibn Yaqdhan a Persian myth. A
novel called Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, based on Avicenna's story, was later
written by Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) in the 12th century and translated
into Latin and English as Philosophus Autodidactus in the 17th
and 18th centuries respectively. In the 13th century, Ibn
al-Nafis wrote his own novel Fadil ibn Natiq, known as Theologus
Autodidactus in the West, as a critical response to Hayy ibn
Yaqdhan.
Persian
works
Avicenna's most
important Persian work is the Danishnama-i 'Alai (دانشنامه علائی, "the Book of Knowledge for [Prince] 'Ala
ad-Daulah"). Avicenna created new scientific vocabulary that had not previously
existed in Persian. The Danishnama covers such topics as logic, metaphysics,
music theory and other sciences of his time. It has been translated into
English by Parwiz Morewedge in 1977. The book is also important in respect
to Persian scientific works.
Andar Danesh-e Rag (اندر دانش رگ, "On the Science of the Pulse") contains nine
chapters on the science of the pulse and is a condensed synopsis.
Persian poetry from Ibn Sina is recorded in various manuscripts and
later anthologies such as Nozhat al-Majales.
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