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Avicennism is a school of early Islamic philosophy which began during the middle of the Islamic Golden Age. The school was founded by Avicenna (Ibn Sina), an 11th-century Persian philosopher who attempted to redefine the course of Islamic philosophy and channel it into new directions. His metaphysical system is built on ingredients and conceptual building blocks which are largely Aristotelian and Neoplatonic, but the final structure is something other than the sum of its parts. For example, while he accepted Neoplatonic emanationist cosmology and the "Amonnian" synthesis of later Aristotelian commentators, he rejected Neoplatonic epistemology and the theory of the pre-existent soul.
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Avicennism is a school of early Islamic philosophy which began during the middle of the Islamic Golden Age. The school was founded by Avicenna (Ibn Sina), an 11th-century Persian philosopher who attempted to redefine the course of Islamic philosophy and channel it into new directions. His metaphysical system is built on ingredients and conceptual building blocks which are largely Aristotelian and Neoplatonic, but the final structure is something other than the sum of its parts. For example, while he accepted Neoplatonic emanationist cosmology and the "Amonnian" synthesis of later Aristotelian commentators, he rejected Neoplatonic epistemology and the theory of the pre-existent soul. His metaphysics also owes much to Islamic legal theory and Kalam on meaning, signification and being.
This philosophy has recognized the compatibility of the metaphysics of contingency, by which Muslim theologians have tried to rationalize the Islamic idea of creation, and the metaphysics of necessity, in which Aristotelians have defended the idea that the goal of philosophy and science is as to understanding why and how things must be as they are. The key to this philosophy is conceptualization of the world as contingent in itself but necessary with references to its causes, leading back to ultimately to the First Cause. The main innovations in this philosophy are the definite distinction of essence from existence and its relation to the cosmological proof he devised, the ontological argument for the existence of God from the metaphysics of contingency and necessity, his idea about knowledge and "individuality of the dissimbodied soul" and his "Floating Man" thought experiment.
Due to his successful reconciliation between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism along with Islamic theology, Avicennism eventually became the leading school of Islamic philosophy by the 12th century and had become a central authority on philosophy by then. In the 13th century, Avicennism was revived by the efforts of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, though the interpretation of this Avicennism was based on the ideas of Suhrawardi (founder of Illuminationist philosophy) and Ibn Arabi, and differed from the rationalist Avicennism known in Europe. In the 16th century, Mulla Sadra innovated a new philosophical system, known as Transcendent theosophy, which combined the vision of Sufi metaphysics and the rationalistic Peripatetic approach of Avicenna.
Although the Avicennian school of thought was criticized by theologians such as al-Ghazali, philosophers such as Averroes, and by Sufis such as Rumi and Attar, Avicenna's writings spread like fire and continued until today to form the basis of philosophical education in the Islamic world. For to the extent that the post-Averroistic tradition remained philosophical, especially in the eastern Islamic lands, it moved in the directions charted for it by Avicenna in the investigation of both theoretical and practical sciences. Most of the later Muslim philosophers, theologians and mystics who tried to harmonize philosophy and theology, like Nasir al-Din Tusi, or philosophy and mysticism, like Suhrawardi, and later on, philosophy and theology and mysticism, like Mulla Sadra, also made use of Avicennan methodology and arguments.
Avicenna
Avicenna, the founder of Avicennism, (b. Bukhara 980, d. Hamadan 1037) was a Persian Muslim polymath and the foremost physician and Islamic philosopher of his time. He was also an astronomer, chemist, Hafiz, logician, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist, Sheikh, soldier, statesman and theologian.
Avicenna wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous philosophical work is The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia. His other prominent philosophical works are Al-Isharat wa-‘l-tanbihat (Remarks and Admonitions), Kitab al-najat (The Book of Deliverance) and Danishnama-i ‘ala’i (The Book of Scientific Knowledge). Avicenna himself writes when introducing his magnum opus, The Book of Healing:
There is nothing in the books of the ancients but we have included in this our book. If something is not found in a place where it is normally found, it would be found in another place where I judge it more fit to be in. I have added to this what I have apprehended with my thought and attained through my reflection, particularly in physics, metaphysics and logic.
Avicenna's legacy in philosophical 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"). The main thesis of these tracts is represented in his so-called "flying man" argument, which resonates with what was centuries later entailed by Descartes's cogito argument (or what phenomenology designates as a form of an "epoche").
On the other hand, there is the trilogy of the Mystical Recitals or Romances to which Avicenna confided the secret of his personal experience. In so doing, he offers us the rare example of a philosopher taking perfect cognizance of himself and who comes at length to fashion his own symbols. The theme of all three Recitals is the journey towards a mystical Orient, an Orient which is not to be found on our maps, but the idea of which is already present in gnosis. The Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, means alive son of awake, describes the invitation to travel in the company of the Angel who illuminates. The other one is Recital of the Bird which completes the journey. Finally, Salaman and Absal are the two heroes of the Recital evoked in the last section of the Book of Instructions(Isharat). These are not allegories but symbolic recitals.
Early Islamic philosophy
As Henry Corbin and Oliver Leaman divide Islamic philosophy into several periods, Avicenna belongs to the early or classic period. This period starts with al-Kindi in 9th and finishes with Averroes at the end of 12th century. The death of Ibn Rushd effectively marks the end of a particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Arabic School, and philosophical activity declined significantly in western Islamic countries, namely in Spain and North Africa, though it persisted for much longer in the Eastern countries, in particular Iran and India which tend to Mystical philosophy and Transcendent Theosophy.
Al-Kindi is often called the first philosopher of the Arabs, and he followed a broadly Neoplatonic approach. One of the earliest of the philosophers in Baghdad was in fact a Christian, Yahya Ibn ‘Adi, and his pupil al-Farabi created much of the agenda for the next four centuries of work. Al-Farabi argued that the works of Aristotle raise important issues for the understanding of the nature of the universe, in particular its origination. Aristotle suggested that the world is eternal, which seems to be in contradiction with the implication in the Qur’an that God created the world out of nothing. Al-Farabi used as his principle of creation the process of emanation, the idea that reality continually flows out of the source of perfection, so that the world was not created at a particular time. A large school of thinkers was strongly influenced by al-Farabi, including Avicenna, and this surely played an important part in making his ideas and methodology so crucial for the following centuries of Islamic philosophy.
Study of Avicennan philosophy
Avicenna's philosophical tenets have become of great interest to critical Western scholarship and to those engaged in the field of Muslim philosophy, in both the West and the East. However, it is still the case that the West only pays attention to a portion of his philosophy known as the Latin Avicennian School. Avicenna's philosophical contributions have been overshadowed by Orientalist scholarship (for example that of Henri Corbin), which has sought to define him as a mystic rather than an Aristotelian philosopher. The so-called ???? ?????? (hikmat-al-mashriqqiyya) remains a source of huge irritation to contemporary Arabic scholars, in particular Reisman, Gutas, Street, and Bertolacci.
The original work, entitled The Easterners (al-mashriqiyun ?????????), was probably lost during Avicenna's lifetime; Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) appended it to a romantic philosophical work of his own in the twelfth century, the Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in order to validate his philosophical system, and, by the time that the work was transmitted into the West, appended as it was to a set of "mystical" opusculae and sundry essays, it was firmly accepted as a demonstration of Avicenna's "esoteric" orientation, which he concealed out of necessity from his peers.
Some argue that such interpretations of Avicenna's "true" state of mind ignore the vast corpus of work that he produced, from major treatises to slurs on his enemies and rivals, misrepresent him utterly. It also detracts attention from the fact that Muslim philosophy flourished during the ten centuries after Avicenna's death, emerging from Avicenna's inflammatory pronouncements on all matters within the world, whether physical or metaphysical; the works of the post-Avicennian Baghdadi Peripatetics and anti-Peripatetics, for example, remain to be studied in much greater detail.
Metaphysical doctrine
Early Islamic philosophy, imbued as it is with Islamic theology, distinguishes more clearly than Aristotelianism the difference between essence and existence. Whereas existence is the domain of the contingent and the accidental, essence endures within a being beyond the accidental. However, Avicenna's commentaries upon the Metaphysics in particular demonstrate that he was much more clearly aligned with a philosophical comprehension of the metaphysical world rather than one that was grounded in theology. The philosophy of Avicenna, particularly that part relating to metaphysics, owes much to Aristotle and to al-Farabi.
Ontology: Distinction between essence and existence
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 can not 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.
The significance of the issue is that there is no issue more central for Islamic philosophy than Wujud (at once being and existence) and its relation to essence. The major ontological distinction made by Avicenna between these two is so central to the whole structure of Islamic philosophy for the past millennium and finally led to division of the philosophers into two groups, one believe in Existentialism or the principiality of existence like Mulla Sadra and the other believe in Essentialism or the principiality of essence like Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi.
Some orientalists (or those particularly influenced by Thomist scholarship) argued that Avicenna was the first to view existence (wujud) as an accident that happens to the essence (mahiyya) and make a real distinction between essence and existence, and was also an early proponent of the concept of essentialism. Avicenna anticipated Frege and Bertrand Russell in "holding that existence is an accident of accidents" and also anticipated Alexius Meinong's "view about nonexistent objects." He also provided early arguments for "a 'necessary being' as cause of all other existents.". However, this aspect of ontology is not the most central to the distinction that Avicenna established between essence and existence. One cannot therefore make the claim that Avicenna was the proponent of the concept of essentialism per se, given that existence (al-wujud) when thought of in terms of necessity would ontologically translate into a notion of the Necessary-Existent-due-to-Itself (wajib al-wujud bi-dhatihi), which is without description or definition, and particularly without quiddity or essence (la mahiyya lahu). Consequently, Avicenna's ontology is 'existentialist' when accounting for being qua existence in terms of necessity (wujub), while it is 'essentialist' in terms of thinking about being qua existence (wujud) in terms of contingency qua possibility (imkan; or mumkin al-wujud: contingent being).
Avicenna was also the first to argue that existence is not a predicate. The idea of "essence precedes existence" is a concept which also dates back to Avicenna and his school of Avicennism, and was further developed by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and his Illuminationist philosophy. The opposite idea of "existence precedes essence" was thus developed in the works of Averroes and Mulla Sadra as a reaction to this idea and is a key foundational concept of existentialism.
God as the First Cause and Necessary Existent
Before Avicenna the discussions among Muslim philosophers were about the unity of God as divine creator and his relationship with the world as creation. The earlier philosophers were affected by the Plotinus ideas.
The ontological form of cosmological argument is put forwarded by Avicenna which is known as "contingency and necessity argument" (Imakan wa Wujub).
Avicenna found inspiration for this metaphysical view in the works of Al-Farabi, but his innovation is in his account a single and necessary first cause of all existence. Whether this view can be reconciled with Islam, particularly given the question of what role is left for God's will, was to become a subject of considerable controversy within intellectual Islamic discourse.
Avicenna's proof for the existence of God was the first ontological argument, which he proposed in the Metaphysics section of The Book of Healing. This was the first attempt at using the method of a priori proof, which utilizes intuition and reason alone. Avicenna's proof of God's existence is unique in that it can be classified as both a cosmological argument and an ontological argument. "It is ontological insofar as ‘necessary existence’ in intellect is the first basis for arguing for a Necessary Existent". The proof is also "cosmological insofar as most of it is taken up with arguing that "contingent existents" cannot stand alone and must end up in a Necessary Existent." Another argument Avicenna presented for God's existence was the problem of the mind-body dichotomy.
According to Avicenna, the universe consists of a chain of actual beings, each giving existence to the one below it and responsible for the existence of the rest of the chain below. Because an actual infinite is deemed impossible by Avicenna, this chain as a whole must terminate in a being that is wholly simple and one, whose essence is its very existence, and therefore is self-sufficient and not in need of something else to give it existence. Because its existence is not contingent on or necessitated by something else but is necessary and eternal in itself, it satisfies the condition of being the necessitating cause of the entire chain that constitutes the eternal world of contingent existing things. Thus his ontological system rests on the conception of God as the Wajib al-Wujud (necessary existent). There is a gradual multiplication of beings through a timeless emanation from God as a result of his self-knowledge.
This view has a profound impact on the monotheistic concept of creation. Existence is not seen by Avicenna as the work of a capricious deity, but of a divine, self-causing thought process. The movement from this to existence is necessary, and not an act of will per se. The world emanates from God by virtue of his abundant intellect - an immaterial cause as found in the neoplatonic concept of emanation.
Cosmology
In Avicenna's account of creation (largely derived from Al-Farabi), from this First Cause proceeds the creation of the material world. The First Cause is transcends the Celestial intelligences that move the spheres. However Avicenna offers his version in response to how multiplicity can have emerged from unity, the First Cause.
The First Intellect, in contemplating the necessity of its existence, gives rise to the Second Intellect. In contemplating its emanation from God, it then gives rise to the First Spirit, which animates the Sphere of Spheres (the universe). In contemplating itself as a self-caused essence (that is, as something that could potentially exist), it gives rise to the matter that fills the universe and forms the Sphere of the Planets (the First Heaven in al-Farabi).
This triple-contemplation establishes the first stages of existence. It continues, giving rise to consequential intellects which create between them two celestial hierarchies: the Superior Hierarchy of Cherubim (Kerubim) and the Inferior Hierarchy, called by Avicenna "Angels of Magnificence". These angels animate the heavens, but are deprived of all sensory perception, but have imagination which allows them to desire the intellect from which they came. Their vain quest to join this intellect causes an eternal movement in heaven. They also cause prophetic visions in humans.
The angels created by each of the next seven Intellects are associated with a different body in the Sphere of the Planets. These are: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The last of these is of particular importance, since its association is with the Angel Gabriel ("The Angel").
This Ninth Intellect occurs at a step so removed from the First Intellect that the emanation that then arises from it explodes into fragments, creating not a further celestial entity, but instead creating human souls, which have the sensory functions lacked by the Angels of Magnificence.
Theory of knowledge and prophecy
According to Avicenna, at birth the incorporeal human soul contains no thought and has merely an empty potentially for thinking. This unqualified potentially for thought which belongs to every member of human being is a deposition inheriting in the incorporeal human soul. The concept of tabula rasa was developed more clearly by Avicenna. Avicenna argued, in the words of Sajjad H. Rizvi, that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts."
For Avicenna, the human intellect has neither the role nor the power to abstract the intelligible from the sensible. Humans are intellectual only potentially, and All knowledge and all recollection are an emanation and an illumination which come from the Angel. Only illumination by the Angel confers upon them the ability to make from this potential a real ability to think. This is the Tenth Intellect, identified with the "active intellect" of Aristotle's De Anima.
It is dual in structure, practical intellect and contemplative intellect, and its two aspects are known as terrestrial angels. The degree to which minds are illuminated by the Angel varies. Of the four states of the contemplative intellect, the one which corresponds to intimacy with the Angel
who is the active Intelligence is called the holy intellect(al-aql al-qudsi). At its height, it attains the privileged status of the spirit of prophecy. Prophets are illuminated to the point that they possess not only rational intellect, but also an imagination and ability which allows them to pass on their superior wisdom to others. Some receive less, but enough to write, teach, pass laws, and contribute to the distribution of knowledge. Others receive enough for their own personal realisation, and others still receive less.
On this view, all humanity shares a single agent intellect - a collective consciousness. The final stage of human life, according to Avicenna, is reunion with the emanation of the Angel. Thus, the Angel confers upon those imbued with its intellect the certainty of life after death. For Avicenna, as for the neoplatonists who influenced him, the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not a purpose for it to fulfill.
According to Henry Corbin, when it comes to the question of the nous poietikos (intelligentia agens), on which the interpreters of Aristotle have been divided from the beginning, Avicenna, following al-Farabi and Ismaili cosmogony and contrary to Themistius and Thomas Aquinas, opted for an Intelligence which is separate from and extrinsic to the human intellect; yet at the same time he does not identify it with the concept of God, as did Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Augustinians. Al-Farabi and Avicenna regarded this Intelligence as a being in the Pleroma, and as linking man directly to the Pleroma. Hereby these philosophers demonstrated their gnostic originality. On the other hand, they were not content with the Peripatetic notion of the soul as the form of an organic body: this 'information' is only one of the soul's functions, and not even the most important of them. Thus their anthropology is neo-Platonic.
Definition of truth
Avicenna defined truth as:
Avicenna elaborated on his definition of truth in his Metaphysics:
In his Quodlibeta, Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on Avicenna's definition of truth in his Metaphysics and explained it as follows:
Avicennian logic
Avicenna discussed the topic of logic in Islamic philosophy and Islamic medicine extensively in his works, and developed his own system of logic known as "Avicennian logic" as an alternative to Aristotelian logic.
After the Latin translations of the 12th century, Avicennian logic had an influence on early medieval European logicians such as Albertus Magnus, though Aristotelian logic later became popular in Europe due to the strong influence of Averroism.
Dimitri Gutas and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy consider the period between the 11th and 14th centuries to be the "Golden Age" of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, initiated by Al-Ghazali's successful integration of logic into the Madrasah curriculum and the subsequent rise of Avicennism.
Avicenna developed an early theory on hypothetical syllogism, which formed the basis of his early risk factor analysis. Avicenna also developed an early theory on propositional calculus, which was an area of logic not covered in the Aristotelian tradition.
Temporal modal logic
The first criticisms of Aristotelian logic were written by Avicenna, who produced independent treatises on logic rather than commentaries. He criticized the logical school of Baghdad for their devotion to Aristotle at the time. He investigated the theory of definition and classification and the quantification of the predicates of categorical propositions, and developed an original theory on temporal modal syllogism. Its premises included modifiers such as "at all times", "at most times", and "at some time".
Systematic refutations of Greek logic were later written by the Illuminationist school, founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", which refers to the reduction of all modalities (necessity, possibility, contingency and impossibility) to the single mode of necessity, an important innovation in the history of logical philosophical speculation.
The Arabic theory of temporal modal logic is considered one of the most significant advances in Islamic logic, and was further developed up until the 15th century, with the logical treatise Sharh al-takmil fi'l-mantiq written by Muhammad ibn Fayd Allah ibn Muhammad Amin al-Sharwani being the last major Arabic work on logic.
Inductive logic
While Avicenna often relied on deductive reasoning in philosophy, he used a different approach in medicine. Avicenna contributed inventively to the development of inductive logic, which he used to pioneer the idea of a syndrome in the diagnosis of specific diseases. In his medical writings, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method.
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (b. 1149) criticised Aristotle's "first figure" and formulated an early system of inductive logic, foreshadowing the system of inductive logic developed by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).
Later logicians
Systematic refutations of Greek logic were written by the Illuminationist school, founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", which refers to the reduction of all modalities (necessity, possibility, contingency and impossibility) to the single mode of necessity.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274) wrote the following commentary on Avicenna's theory of absolute propositions:
In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis (1213-1288) wrote a book on Avicennian logic, which was a commentary of Avicenna's Al-Isharat (The Signs) and Al-Hidayah (The Guidance). In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, in his Muqaddimah (1377), wrote the following on how Islamic logic had changed since the 12th century:
Avicennian epistemology and psychology
Empiricism, tabula rasa, nature versus nurture
One of Avicenna's most influential theories in Muslim psychology and epistemology is his theory of knowledge, in which he developed the concepts of empiricism and tabula rasa, which later gave rise to the nature versus nurture debate in modern philosophy and psychology. He argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning; observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts." He further argued that the intellect itself "possesses levels of development from the material intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulani), that potentiality that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘il), the state of the human intellect at conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge."
In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Arabian philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) first demonstrated Avicenna's theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island. The Latin translation of his work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many Enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.
Neuropsychiatry, psychophysiology, psychosomatic medicine
In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna noted the close relationship between emotions and the physical condition and felt that music had a definite physical and psychological effect on patients. Of the many mental disorders that he described in the Qanun, one is of unusual interest: love sickness. Avicenna is reputed to have diagnosed this condition in a Prince in Jurjan who lay sick and whose malady had baffled local doctors. Avicenna noted a fluttering in the Prince's pulse when the address and name of his beloved were mentioned. The great doctor had a simple remedy: unite the sufferer with the beloved.
Avicenna was the pioneer of neuropsychiatry. He first described numerous neuropsychiatric conditions, including hallucination, insomnia, mania, nightmare, melancholia, dementia, epilepsy, paralysis, stroke, vertigo and tremor.
Avicenna was also a pioneer in psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine, and the firs to recognize 'physiological psychology' in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings, which is seen as an anticipation of the word association test attributed to Carl Jung. Avicenna identified love sickness when he was treating a very ill patient by "feeling the patient's pulse and reciting aloud to him the names of provinces, districts, towns, streets, and people." He noticed how the patient's pulse increased when certain names were mentioned, from which Avicenna deduced that the patient was in love with a girl whose home Avicenna was "able to locate by the digital examination." Avicenna advised the patient to marry the girl he is in love with, and the patient soon recovered from his illness after his marriage.
Thought experiments on self-consciousness
"Floating Man" thought experiment
While he was imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, Avicenna described the earliest known thought experiment, now famously known as the "Floating Man" thought experiment, to demonstrate human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul. He 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. His "Floating Man" thought experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air, isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still have self-consciousness. He thus concludes 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. This idea was in contrast with Muslim theologians including Mu'tazili and Ash'ari? ones. Avicenna summarized his thought experiment as follows:
Later Muslim philosophers and theologians such as Suhrawardi and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi attempted to further develop this idea. This argument was then later refined and simplified by René Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own consciousness." There's another viewpoint that Descartes's quotation is a misunderstanding when he said "I think, therefore I am." On the basis of Avicenna's discussion, a human knows himself without any internal or external effect and before any thought and if somebody tries to prove himself on the basis of an effect like his own consciousness, then he is just misleading himself.
"Flying Man" thought experiment
Avicenna also described another similar "Flying Man" thought experiment, which asks the question: "Can the soul be aware of its existence without the body?" Avicenna then responded with the following thought experiment:
This experiment was well-known in medieval Europe and had an influence on Christian philosophers such as Saint Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus.
Avicennian physics
In physics, Ibn Sina was the first to employ an air thermometer to measure air temperature in his scientific experiments.
In optics, Ibn Sina posited that the speed of light is finite, as he "observed 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 sophisticated explanation for the rainbow phenomenon. Carl Benjamin Boyer described Ibn Sina's theory on the rainbow as follows:
Theory of impetus
In mechanics, Ibn Sina developed an elaborate theory of motion, in which he made a distinction between the inclination 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. His theory of motion was thus consistent with the concept of inertia in Newton's first law of motion. Ibn Sina also referred to mayl to as being proportional to weight times velocity, a precursor to the concept of momentum in Newton's second law of motion. Ibn Sina's theory of mayl was further developed by Jean Buridan in his theory of impetus.
In the 14th century, Jean Buridan rejected the Hipparchan-Philoponan (H-P) notion that the motive force, which he named impetus, dissipated spontaneously, and adopted the Avicennan theory of impetus in which (i) it is only corrupted by the resistances of the medium and of gravity in the case of anti-gravitational motion, but would otherwise be permanently conserved in the absence of any resistances to motion, and in which (ii) gravity is also a downward projector and creator of downward impetus, unlike in the radically different Hipparchan-Philoponan theory in which gravity neither creates not destroys impetus. The assimilation of the role of gravity in natural motion to the role of a projector that creates impetus just as it is created by a thrower in anti-gravitational violent motion was explicitly stated by Buridan's pupil Dominicus de Clavasio in his 1357 De Caelo, as follows:
- "When something moves a stone by violence, in addition to imposing on it an actual force, it impresses in it a certain impetus. In the same way gravity not only gives motion itself to a moving body, but also gives it a motive power and an impetus, ...".
Buridan's position was that a moving object would only be arrested by the resistance of the air and the weight of the body which would oppose its impetus.
The tunnel experiment and oscillatory motion
The Avicennan-Buridan (A-B) self-conserving impetus theory developed one of the most important thought-experiments in the history of science, namely the so-called 'tunnel-experiment', so important because it brought oscillatory and pendulum motion within the pale of dynamical analysis and understanding in the science of motion for the very first time and thereby also established one of the important principles of classical mechanics. The pendulum was to play a crucially important role in the development of mechanics in the 17th century, and so more generally was the axiomatic principle of Galilean, Huygenian and Leibnizian dynamics to which the tunnel experiment also gave rise, namely that a body rises to the same height from which it has fallen, a principle of gravitational potential energy. As Galileo expressed this fundamental principle of his dynamics in his 1632 Dialogo:
"The heavy falling body acquires sufficient impetus [in falling from a given height] to carry it back to an equal height."
This imaginary experiment predicted that a canonball dropped down a tunnel going straight through the centre of the Earth and out the other side would go past the centre and rise on the opposite surface to the same height from which it had first fallen on the other side, driven upwards past the centre by the gravitationally created impetus it had continually accumulated in falling downwards to the centre. This impetus would require a violent motion correspondingly rising to the same height past the centre for the now opposing force of gravity to destroy it all in the same distance which it had previously required to create it, and whereupon at this turning point the ball would then descend again and oscillate back and forth between the two opposing surfaces about the centre ad infinitum in principle. Thus the tunnel experiment provided the first dynamical model of oscillatory motion, albeit a purely imaginary one in the first instance, and specifically in terms of A-B impetus dynamics.
Whereas the orthodox Aristotelians could only see pendulum motion as a dynamical anomaly, as inexplicably somehow 'falling to rest with difficulty' as the American irrationalist historian and philosopher of science Tom Kuhn put it in his 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, on the A-B impetus theory's novel analysis it was not falling with any dynamical difficulty at all in principle, but was rather falling in repeated and potentially endless cycles of alternating downward gravitationally natural motion and upward gravitationally violent motion. Hence, for example, Galileo was eventually to appeal to pendulum motion to demonstrate that the speed of gravitational free-fall is the same for all unequal weights precisely by virtue of dynamically modelling pendulum motion in this manner as a case of cyclically repeated gravitational free-fall along the horizontal in principle.In terms of Kuhnian psycho-babble, this A-B impetus dynamics model of pendulum motion was 'a gestalt-switch induced by lateral thinking'.
In fact the tunnel experiment, and hence pendulum motion, was an imaginary crucial experiment in favour of A-B impetus dynamics against both orthodox Aristotelian dynamics without any auxiliary impetus theory, and also against Aristotelian dynamics with its H-P variant. For according to the latter two theories the bob cannot possibly pass beyond the normal. In orthodox Aristotelian dynamics there is no force to carry the bob upwards beyond the centre in violent motion against its own gravity that carries it to the centre, where it stops. And when conjoined with the H-P auxiliary theory, in the case where the canonball is released from rest, again there is no such force because either all the initial upward force of impetus originally impressed within it to hold it in static dynamical equilibrium has been exhausted, or else if any remained it would be acting in the opposite direction and combine with gravity to prevent motion through and beyond the centre. Nor were the canonball to be positively hurled downwards, and thus with a downward initial impetus, could it possibly result in an oscillatory motion. For although it could then possibly pass beyond the centre, it could never return to pass through it and rise back up again. For dynamically in this case although it would be logically possible for it to pass beyond the centre if when it reached it some of the constantly decaying downward impetus remained and still sufficiently much to be stronger than gravity to push it beyond the centre and upwards again, nevertheless when it eventually then became weaker than gravity, whereupon the ball would then be pulled back towards the centre by its gravity, it could not then pass beyond the centre to rise up again, because it would have no force directed against gravity to overcome it. For any possibly remaining impetus would be directed 'downwards' towards the centre, that is, in the same direction in which it was originally created.
Thus pendulum motion was dynamically impossible for both orthodox Aristotelian dynamics and also for H-P impetus dynamics on this 'tunnel model' analogical reasoning. But it was predicted by the A-B impetus theory's tunnel prediction precisely because that theory posited that a continually accumulating downwards force of impetus directed towards the centre is acquired in natural motion, sufficient to then carry it upwards beyond the centre against gravity, and rather than only having an initially upwards force of impetus away from the centre as in the H-P theory of natural motion. So the tunnel experiment constituted a crucial experiment between three alternative theories of natural motion.
On this analysis then A-B impetus dynamics was to be preferred if the Aristotelian science of motion was to incorporate a dynamical explanation of pendulum motion. And indeed it was also to be preferred more generally if it was to explain other oscillatory motions, such as the to and fro vibrations around the normal of musical strings in tension, such as those of a zither, lute or guitar. For here the analogy made with the gravitational tunnel experiment was that the tension in the string pulling it towards the normal played the role of gravity, and thus when plucked i.e. pulled away from the normal and then released, this was the equivalent of pulling the canonball to the Earth's surface and then releasing it. Thus the musical string vibrated in a continual cycle of the alternating creation of impetus towards the normal and its destruction after passing through the normal until this process starts again with the creation of fresh 'downward' impetus once all the 'upward' impetus has been destroyed.
Philosophy of education
In the medieval Islamic world, an elementary school was known as a maktab, which dates back to at least the 10th century. Like madrasahs (which referred to higher education), a maktab was often attached to a mosque. In the 11th century, Ibn Sina, in one of his books, wrote a chapter dealing with the maktab entitled "The Role of the Teacher in the Training and Upbringing of Children", as a guide to teachers working at maktab schools. He wrote that children can learn better if taught in classes instead of individual tuition from private tutors, and he gave a number of reasons for why this is the case, citing the value of competition and emulation among pupils as well as the usefulness of group discussions and debates. Ibn Sina described the curriculum of a maktab school in some detail, describing the curricula for two stages of education in a maktab school.
Primary education
Ibn Sina wrote that children should be sent to a maktab school from the age of 6 and be taught primary education until they reach the age of 14. During which time, he wrote that they should be taught the Qur'an, Islamic metaphysics, language, literature, Islamic ethics, and manual skills (which could refer to a variety of practical skills).
Secondary education
Ibn Sina refers to the secondary education stage of maktab schooling as the period of specialization, when pupils should begin to acquire manual skills, regardless of their social status. He writes that children after the age of 14 should be given a choice to choose and specialize in subjects they have an interest in, whether it was reading, manual skills, literature, preaching, medicine, geometry, trade and commerce, craftsmanship, or any other subject or profession they would be interested in pursuing for a future career. He wrote that this was a transitional stage and that there needs to be flexibility regarding the age in which pupils graduage, as the student's emotional development and chosen subjects need to be taken into account.
Philosophy of science
Scientific methodology
In the Al-Burhan (On Demonstration) section of the 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."
In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna was the first to describe the methods of agreement, difference and concomitant variation which are critical to inductive logic and the scientific method. However, unlike his contemporary Abu Rayhan al-Biruni who developed scientific methods where "universals came out of practical, experimental work" and "theories are formulated after discoveries", Avicenna developed a scientific method where "general and universal questions came first and led to experimental work."
Natural philosophy
Avicenna and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, who are both regarded as two of the greatest polymaths in Persian history, engaged in a written debate, with al-Biruni mostly criticizing Aristotelian natural philosophy and the Peripatetic school, while Avicenna and his student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi respond to al-Biruni's criticisms in writing. Al-Biruni began by asking Avicenna eighteen questions, ten of which were criticisms of Aristotle's On the Heavens, with his first question criticizing Aristotle's reasons for denying the existence of levity or gravity in the celestial spheres and the Aristotelian notion of circular motion being an innate property of the heavenly bodies.
Biruni's second question criticizes Aristotle's over-reliance on more ancient views concerning the heavens, while the third criticizes the Aristotelian view that space has only six directions. The fourth question deals with the continuity and discontinuity of physical bodies, while the fifth criticizes the Peripatetic school's denial of the possibility of there existing another world completely different from the world known to them.
In his sixth question, Biruni rejects Aristotle's view on the celestial spheres having circular orbits rather than elliptic orbits. In his seventh question, he rejects Aristotle's notion that the motion of the heavens begins from the right side and from the east, while his eighth question concerns Aristotle's view on the fire element being spherical. The ninth question concerns the movement of heat, and the tenth question concerns the transformation of elements.
The eleventh question concerns the burning of bodies by radiation reflecting off a flask filled with water, and the twelfth concerns the natural tendency of the classical elements in their upward and downward movements. The thirteenth question deals with vision, while the fourteenth concerns habitation on different parts of Earth. His fifteenth question asks how two opposite squares in a square divided into four can be tangential, while the sixteenth question concerns vacuum. His seventeenth question asks "if things expand upon heating and contract upon cooling, why does a flask filled with water break when water freezes in it?" His eighteenth and final question concerns the observable phenomenon of ice floating on water.
After Avicenna responded to the questions, Biruni was unsatisfied with some of the answers and wrote back commenting on them, after which Avicenna's student Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Ma'sumi wrote back on behalf of Avicenna.
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 wrote a number of treatises dealing with Islamic theology. These included treatises on the Islamic prophets, who he viewed as "inspired philosophers", and on various scientific and philosophical interpretations of the Qur'an, such as how Quranic cosmology corresponds to his own philosophical system. He attempted to use philosophy in order to prove the realities established by the Islamic prophetic tradition.
Avicenna's investigation into the natural sciences was inspired by his quest to discover the signs (a’yat) of Allah and thus arrive at a better understanding and appreciation of God’s magnificence. He wrote:
Quranic commentaries
Avicenna memorized the Qur'an by the age of seven, and as an adult, he wrote five treatises commenting on suras from the Qur'an. One of these texts included the Proof of Prophecies, in which he comments on several Quranic verses and holds the Qur'an in high esteem. Avicenna argued that the Islamic prophets should be considered higher than philosophers, and in his Autobiography, he considered both religion and philosophy as necessary parts of the entire truth.
Avicennism in Islamic philosophy
Avicenna's immediate followers were of the highest standing. There was, first and foremost, the faithful Abu Ubayd al-Juzjani, who wrote a Persian version and commentary on the Hayy ibn Yaqdhan; Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) wrote a philosophical novel, also entitled Hayy ibn Yaqzan; Husayn ibn Zayla of Isfahan, who wrote a commentary on it in Arabic; and Bahmanyar, a Zoroastrian whose important work remains unedited.
However Avicennism affected the critics too. Just two generations after Avicenna, al-Ghazali testifies to the fact that no serious Muslim thinker could ignore the claim of philosophy as a way to the highest and most comprehensive knowledge available to man and as a way to the Truth. He also testifies to the fact that philosophy for all practical purposes meant Avicenna's philosophy. When he tried to present the intentions of the philosophers, he wrote a summary of Avicenna's philosophy. And when he tried to show the incoherence of the philosophers, he wrote a refutation of Avicennism. Similarly, when Al-Shahrastani came to give an account of the doctrines of “the philosophers of Islam” as distinguished from the doctrines of Greek or Indian philosophers, he simply summarized the doctrines of “the most distinguished ... Avicenna”. His supriority has been so great that several scholars in the 12th century commented on his strong influence at the time:
Most of the later Muslim theologians and mystics who tried to harmonize philosophy and theology, like Nasir al-Din Tusi, or philosophy and mysticism, like Suhrawardi, and later on, philosophy and theology and mysticism, like Mulla Sadra, also made use of Avicennan methodology and arguments.
Criticism and post-Avicennian philosophy among Muslims
Avicenna's philosophical doctrine was later criticized by Muslim theologians, Sufis and other Islamic philosophers. These criticisms eventually led to a new philosophy in the 16th century known as Transcendent Theosophy.
Ash'ari theologians, especially al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, criticized him due to the contrast of some of his ideas to that of the Qur'an and Hadith. Al-Ghazali, in his famous work The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafat al-Falasafah), criticized Avicenna in three cases: First, qadim, that is the word has no beginning in the past and is not created in time. Second, that God's knowledge includes only classes of beings (universals) and does not extend to individual beings and their circumstances (particulars), and third, , bodily resurrection, i.e. after death the souls of humans will never again return into bodies. According to al-Ghazali, in these three cases the teachings of Islam, which are based on revelation, suggest the opposite and thus overrule the unfounded claims of the Avicenna.
He accused Avicenna of disbelief in Islam and even argued that it was fard to consider him a Kafir, despite the fact that Avicenna accepted the shortage of his own philosophy in several works, including The Book of Healing, where he confessed that he can not prove bodily resurrection but accepts it on the basis of faith. In the following period, in the wake of Avicenna's Peripatetic philosophy in the 11th and 12th centuries, Ash'ari theology was predominant in the eastern Islamic lands. Of course, as Henry Corbin mentions, Avicennism didn't fade away by such criticisms in the Muslim world, especially in Iran.
Among Muslim philosophers Averroes criticized Avicenna due to his divergence from Aristotle. He rejected the theory of the celestial Souls,
and consequently the theory of an imagination which is independent
of the corporeal senses. The tide of Averroism was to submerge the effects of Avicennism in Christianity, quite a different fate awaited
it in the East. There Averroism was unknown, and al-Ghazali's critique didn't have great effect.
On the other hand some Sufis such as Rumi and Attar usually criticized rationalistic methodology of Early Islamic philosophy which put reason as a curtain between intellect and truth, which lead to considering the God as the First Cause which couldn't be worshiped.
Sufis also have criticized Avicenna on the basis of Sufi metaphysics. For example Farid-al-Din Attar criticized him while describes Tawhid in Conference of the Birds. The basis of the criticism is "Wahdat-ul-Wujood" or Unity of Being which means there is not any true being but God. This idea contradicts with the Avicennan cosmology which considers God as the first cause of all things. According to Sufism there isn't any real cause but God.
Insofar as the opposition between al-Ghazali and philosophers may with truth be defined as the opposition between the philosophy of the heart and pure speculative philosophy, it was one that could be overcome only by something which did not reject either philosophy or the spiritual experience of Sufism, this was the doctrine of al-Suhrawardi. In the eastern part of Muslim lands Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi followed Avicenna's attempts to build an "Oriental philosophy" (Hikmat al-Mashriqia), a project which according to Suhrwardi, could never have been completed because he was ignorant of true Oriental sources such as Persian philosophy. Al-Suhrawardi essentialistic approach led to a new philosophy which is known as the School of Illumination. As Suhrwardi wrote in the beginning of Story of Western Loneliness, he starts the story from where Avicenna ended the story of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan.
In the 13th century, Avicennism was revived by the efforts of Nasir al-Din Tusi, though the interpretation of this Avicennism was based on the ideas of Suhrwardi and Ibn Arabi, and differed from the rationalist Avicennism known in Europe. In the 16th century, Mulla Sadra innovated a new philosophical system which combined the vision of Sufi metaphysics and the rationalistic Peripatetic approach of Avicenna. He also solved some of the major problems in Avicennism such as bodily resurrection.
Avicennism in medieval Europe
In medieval Europe, the main significance of the Latin corpus lies in the interpretation of Avicennism, in particular for regarding his doctrines on the nature of the soul and his existence-essence distinction, along with the debates and censure that they raised in scholastic Europe. This was particularly the case in Paris, where Avicennism was later proscribed in 1210. However, the influence of his psychology and theory of knowledge upon William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus have been noted. More significant is the impact of his metaphysics upon the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas. Finally the tide of Averroism was to submerge the effects of Avicennism in Christianity.
The Latin followers of Avicenna, known as the "Avicennian left" in Europe, also came close to materialism in the 13th century, according to Ernest Mandel.
See also
Footnotes
External links
entire text (in English translation) of Ibn Sina's rare work "A Compendium on the Soul" (keywords: Ibn Sina.pdf, Avicenna.pdf, Avicena.pdf, Ibn Sina - A Compendium on the Soul.pdf).
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