Jon McGinnis

Avicenna's discussion of space is found in his comments on Aristotle's account of place. Aristotle identified four candidates for place: a body's matter, form, the occupied space, or the limits of the containing body, and opted for the last. Neoplatonic commentators argued contra Aristotle that a thing's place is the space it occupied. Space for these Neoplatonists is something possessing dimensions and distinct from any body that occupies it, even if never devoid of body. Avicenna argues that this Neoplatonic notion of space is untenable on the basis of three arguments. In general he maintains that bodies' impenetrability is explained by reference to dimensionality. Consequently, if it is dimensionality that explains impenetrability, and yet as the Neoplatonists hold space inherently possesses dimensions, material bodies could never interpenetrate space and so occupy it and thus bodies could never have a place. The conclusion is patently false. In additions Avicenna argues that the method used to arrive at the possibility of space is illicit, and so Neoplatonist cannot show that space is even possible. Thus, concludes Avicenna, Aristotle's initial account must be correct. The paper outlines the historical context of this debate and then treats Avicenna's arguments against space in detail.

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.

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

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

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

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

: 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

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.

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

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