The study begins with the language employed in and the psychological basis of thought experiments as understood by certain medieval Arabic philosophers. It then provides a taxonomy of different kinds of thoughts experiments used in the medieval Islamic world. These include purely fictional thought experiments, idealizations and finally thought experiments using ingenious machines. The study concludes by suggesting that thought experiments provided a halfway house during this period between a staunch rationalism and an emerging empiricism.
: The present study considers Ibn Sînâ's (Lat. Avicenna) account of induction (istiqra') and experimentation (tajriba). For Ibn Sînâ induction purportedly provided the absolute, necessary and certain first principles of a science. Ibn Sînâ criticized induction, arguing that it can neither guarantee the necessity nor provide the primitiveness required of first principles. In it place, Ibn Sînâ developed a theory of experimentation, which avoids the pitfalls of induction by not providing absolute, but conditional, necessary and certain first principles. The theory (...) of experimentation that emerges though not modern, does have elements that are similar to a modern conception of scientific method. (shrink)
The paper treats Avicenna’s ’metaphysical’ argument for the existence of God and the modal metaphysics that underpins it. Earlier analyses of modalities attempted to reduce necessity, possibility and impossibility to nonmodal elements, which was done most commonly by appealing to a temporal frequency model of modalities. In contrast, Avicenna believed that modalities were an inherent feature of existence, and so just as there is nothing more basic than existence, so likewise there is nothing more basic in term of which modalities (...) can be explained. The article concludes by considering how Avicenna’s modal metaphysics in turn provides him the means to show the absolute and nonconditional necessity of God, as opposed to the conditional necessity of earlier ’physical’ arguments. (shrink)
Aristotle's account of place in terms of an innermost limit of a containing body was to generate serious discussion and controvery among Aristotle's later commentators, especially when it was applied to the cosmos as a whole. The problem was that since there is nothing outside of the cosmos that could contain it, the cosmos apparently could not have a place according to Aristotle's definition; however, if the cosmos does not have a place, then it is not clear that it could (...) move, but it was thought to move, namely, in its daily revolution, which was viewed as a kind of natural locomotion and so required the cosmos to have a place. The study briefly outlines Aristotle's account of place and then considers its fate, particularly with respect to the cosmos and its motion, at the hands of later commentators. To this end, it begins with Theophrastus' puzzles concerning Aristotle's account of place, and how later Greek commentators, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and others, attempted to address these problems in what can only be described as ad hoc ways. It then considers Philoponus' exploitation of these problems as a means to replace Aristotle's account of place with his own account of place understood in terms of extension. The study concludes with the Arabic Neoplatonizing Aristotelian Avicenna and his novel introduction of a new category of motion, namely, motion in the category of position. Briefly, Avicenna denies that the cosmos has a place, and so claims that it moves not with respect to place, but with respect to position. (shrink)
This volume introduces the major classical Arabic philosophers through substantial selections from the key works (many of which appear in translation for the first time here) in each of the fields—including logic, philosophy of science, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and politics—to which they made significant contributions. -/- An extensive Introduction situating the works within their historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts offers support to students approaching the subject for the first time, as well as to instructors with little or no formal (...) training in Arabic thought. A glossary, select bibliography, and index are also included. (shrink)
A debated topic in Avicennan psychology is whether for Avicenna abstraction is a metaphor for emanation or to be taken literally. This issue stems from the deeper philosophical question of whether humans acquire intelligibles externally from an emanation by the Active Intellect, which is a separate substance, or internally from an inherently human cognitive process, which prepares us for an emanation from the Active Intellect. I argue that the tension between thesedoctrines is only apparent. In his logical works Avicenna limns (...) an account where through the internal human process of abstraction accidents accruing to an essence existing in matter are extracted, thus preparing the essence for new accidents emanating externally from the Active Intellect, which make the essence something conceptualized in the intellect. This study, then, outlines the epistemological and metaphysical framework presented in the logical works that underpins Avicenna’s theory of abstraction presented in his psychological works. (shrink)
The forma fluens/fluxus formae debate concerns the question as to whether motion is something distinct from the body in motion, the flow of a distinct form identified with motion , or nothing more than the successive states of the body in motion, the flow of some form found in one of Aristotle's ten categories . Although Albertus Magnus introduced this debate to the Latin West he drew his inspiration from Avicenna. This study argues that Albertus misclassified Avicenna's position, since Albertus (...) could not conceptualize motion at an instant, whereas it is claimed here this was the very position Avicenna adopted. The paper includes an overview of Albertus's discussion and a brief survey of the Avicennan sources upon which Albertus drew. The heart of the paper treats Avicenna's analysis of motion at an instant. Avicenna's general argument was that since spatial points have no extremities, nothing in principle prevents a moving object from being at a spatial point for more than an instant, understood as a limit. It is then argued that Avicenna had the philosophical machinery to make sense of a limit, albeit not in mathematical terms, but in terms of an Aristotelian potential infinite. (shrink)
A debated topic in Avicennan psychology is whether for Avicenna abstraction is a metaphor for emanation or to be taken literally. This issue stems from the deeper philosophical question of whether humans acquire intelligibles externally from an emanation by the Active Intellect, which is a separate substance, or internally from an inherently human cognitive process, which prepares us for an emanation from the Active Intellect. I argue that the tension between thesedoctrines is only apparent. In his logical works Avicenna limns (...) an account where through the internal human process of abstraction accidents accruing to an essence existing in matter are extracted, thus preparing the essence for new accidents emanating externally from the Active Intellect, which make the essence something conceptualized in the intellect. This study, then, outlines the epistemological and metaphysical framework presented in the logical works that underpins Avicenna’s theory of abstraction presented in his psychological works. (shrink)
Volume 2 covers one of the richest eras for the philosophical study of religion. Covering the period from the 6th century to the Renaissance, this volume shows how Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers explicated and defended their religious faith in light of the philosophical traditions they inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The enterprise of 'faith seeking understanding', as it was dubbed by the medievals themselves, emerges as a vibrant encounter between - and a complex synthesis of - the (...) Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic traditions of antiquity on the one hand, and the scholastic and monastic religious schools of the medieval West, on the other. (shrink)
while it should go without saying, it bears mentioning: the history of atomism in the medieval Islamic East is not the same as that of the medieval Christian West. One simply cannot assume that what is true of the conception of the atom in the West also need be true of the conception of the atom in the East, or even that the two traditions are drawing upon and responding to the same set of literature. In fact, the question is (...) open as to whether these two histories even share a common origin. While there certainly is a presumption that the history of Islamic atomism is a continuation of Greek atomism, this remains very much a presumption. Indeed, Shlomo Pines, in his groundbreaking Beiträge zur islamischen... (shrink)
The work treats various aspects of Avicennan philosophy and science. The topics include methods for establishing an authentic Avicenna corpus, natural philosophy and science, theology and metaphysics and Avicenna's subsequent historical influence.
Il naturale senso della logica in relazione alla scienza è quello di fornire un linguaggio alle acquisizioni epistemologiche: tale sembra essere il senso assegnatogli anche da Avicenna in al-Mantiq. La questione in realtà è molto più profonda: quale relazione c'è fra gli universali predicabili e gli oggetti della scienza? Attraverso l'esame della questione quale è delineata nel Madkhal, in particolare in merito al genere e alla differenza, e il loro ruolo nelle scienze in alcuni passaggi del Kitab al-Burhan, l'A. verifica (...) l'applicazione delle considerazioni teoretiche in un problema fisico pratico affrontato nel Kitab-al-Tabi'iyat. (shrink)
This study looks at the position of two of the Middle Ages’ towering intellectual figures, Avicenna and Aquinas, and their arguments concerning the age of the cosmos. The primary focus is the nature of possibility and whether possibility is such that God can create it or such that its “existence” has some degree of independence from God’s creative act. It is shown how one’s answer to this initial question in turn has enormous ramifications on a number of other, core theological (...) topics. These issues include one’s position concerning whether the cosmos necessarily existed infinitely into the past or may have been created at some finite point in the past; how one understands divine simplicity; what constitutes omnipotence; and even the place of rhetoric in theological and philosophical discussions. (shrink)
Avicenna’s _Physics_ is the very first volume that he wrote when he began his monumental encyclopedia of science and philosophy, _The_ _Healing_. Avicenna’s reasons for beginning with _Physics_ are numerous: it offers up the principles needed to understand such special natural sciences as psychology; it sets up many of the problems that take center stage in his _Metaphysics_; and it provides concrete examples of many of the abstract analytical tools that he would develop later in _Logic_. While Avicenna’s _Physics _roughly (...) follows the thought of Aristotle’s _Physics_, with its emphasis on natural causes, the nature of motion, and the conditions necessary for motion, the work is hardly derivative. It represents arguably the most brilliant mind of late antiquity grappling with and rethinking the entire tradition of natural philosophy inherited from the Greeks as well as the physical thought of Muslim speculative theologians. As such, _Physics_ is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding Avicenna’s complete philosophical system, the history of science, or the history of ideas. (shrink)
One of the most fundamental notions in the thought of Aristotle is the distinction between actuality and potentiality, which Aristotle links with the equally fundamental distinction between form and matter respectively. According to Aristotle, form, which brings with it actuality, and matter, which brings with it potentiality, are eternal and as such necessary. Consequently, on Aristotle?s view, neither form nor matter needs an efficient cause for its existence. Later thinkers?both in the Greek Neoplatonic tradition and Arabic falsafa tradition?believed that in (...) fact form and matter, while being eternal, nonetheless did have an efficient cause, namely, God. In order to maintain this belief, however, these later thinkers needed to respond to certain arguments that Aristotle had presented, which identified existing for all time with being necessary, while anything that has an efficient cause is merely possible and so does not exist for all time. After briefly outlining developments in the late Greek-speaking world surrounding this issue concerning God?s causal relation to eternal forms and matter, I shall consider two theories presented in the Arabic-speaking world: first that of Abu Bishr Matta and second that of Avicenna and his criticism of Abu Bishr. What primarily sets Avicenna apart from other thinkers is that he closely links possibility with matter. While this shift might seem small it opens up for Avicenna a whole new array of options that were not available to earlier philosophers. (shrink)
