Jon McGinnis

This study considers powers, natures, and possibility as they appear in the logical, physical, and metaphysical writings of Avicenna (980–1037), one of the foremost physicians and philosophers of the medieval Islamic world. It is argued that Avicenna maintained the “opacity of powers.” The opacity of powers refers to an epistemological position concerning the limits of empirical methods of investigation and the consequent limits on what one can know about the specific powers of the various natural kinds that populate the world. More precisely, the thesis is that while empirical methods can provide one with knowledge _that_ certain kinds of things possess specific powers, one cannot know the _what_ and _wherefore_ of those powers. Despite an inability to know the causal mechanisms that explains why powers do what they do, Avicenna still believes that empirical methods provide sufficient knowledge about powers to allow for “normal science.” Avicenna’s position, it is suggested, initiated a move toward instrumentalism among post-Avicennan philosophers and scientists in the medieval Islamic world.

In “Avicenna on Meno’s Paradox,” Michael Marmura provides a translation with comments on Ibn Sīnā’s chapter from The Book of Demonstration where Ibn Sīnā resolves Meno’s paradox. Marmura, however, does not consider in detail the chapters leading up to his resolution. There Ibn Sīnā outlines his unique understanding of how to undertake a scientific inquiry, which not only underlies his solution to Meno’s paradox, but also informs his approach throughout his monumental summa of philosophy, the Shifāʾ. The present study considers this broader context for his solution to the paradox and concludes with a case study from Ibn Sīnā’s Physics, where one sees his scientific method in practice.

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.

This epilogue explores and sometimes expands on many of the recurrent themes of this volume. It takes seriously the editors’ observation about the subject-rootednessSubject-rootedness of experience as understood in the medieval Islamicate world and about the notion of internalized objectivityObjectivity, internalized as a lens for reassessing our histories of science. It argues that rather than holding to our current sharp, even arbitrary, divide between the objective and subjective, it is more fruitful to approach Islamicate science as one that views the relation between the experience of the individual scientists and the standards of a given scientific community as forming an ecosystemEcosystem. Using the interpretive frame set out in the volume’s introduction, the epilogue supplements and contextualizes the essays to show that both subject-rootednessSubject-rootednessand internalized objectivityObjectivity, internalized were operative throughout the scientific endeavors of medieval Islamic science. Against this background, a number of disciplines that have been excluded from or marginalized in our histories of science—such as grammar, theology, astrology, and dream interpretation—emerge as areas of scientific and historical interest.

Ibn Sīnā (c. 973-1037), the Avicenna of Latin fame, developed a unique theory of the elements and their status in mixtures that severely challenged the views of earlier natural philosophers and in its turn was severely challenged by later Latin Schoolmen in the West. At its core, Ibn Sīnā argues that the elemental forms remain actual, not merely potential, in mixtures. His elemental theory profoundly affected his own understanding of hylomorphic composition, has ramifications on his theory of essentialism and even limits empirical methods to investigating only the material conditions and not the essences of things. In this study, I present the background to Ibn Sīnā's new theory of the elements and mixtures together with its implications for hylomorphism, Avicennan essentialism and the limitations on empirical investigation. I conclude with a ‘crazy idea.’ The idea is that Ibn Sīnā's brand of hylomorphism and essentialism can accommodate the Theory of Evolution in ways that other accounts of essentialism have trouble doing. Specifically, I conclude with three critiques of essentialism found among contemporary philosophers of biology and argue that Ibn Sīnā provides the resources to handle these critiques in relatively natural ways.

This chapter on creation and eternity in medieval philosophy focuses on arguments for the world's age drawn from the nature of time. To this end, there are four main sections. The first covers proofs for the eternity of the world taken from the nature of time, with an emphasis on Aristotle's original argument for that thesis and then Avicenna's modal version of the proof. The second deals with rejoinders, based upon non‐Aristotelian conceptions of time, to proofs for the eternity of the world with a focus on Augustine's idealist conception of time. The third section takes up positive arguments for the temporal finitude of the cosmos and the difficulties surrounding the idea of infinite past time. The final section canvasses the “agnostic position” of Ibn Tufayl, Moses Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas concerning the question of the cosmos's age.

This study provides the historical background to, and analysis and translations of, two seminal texts from the medieval Islamic world concerning the univocity of being/existence and a theory of “ambiguous predication” (tashkīk), which is similar to the Thomistic theory of analogy. The disputants are Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1149–1210), who defended a theory of the univocity of being, and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (1201–1274), who defended the theory of ambiguous predication. While the purported issue is whether a quiddity can cause its own existence, the debate extends further. Rāzī draws on several arguments that “existence” must be predicated univocally of God and creature and then concludes that, given the univocity of “existence,” God cannot be simple, but is a composite of the divine quiddity and distinct attributes. In contrast, Ṭūsī denies that “existence” is said univocally of God and creature and rather is predicated ambiguously/analogously, and then defends divine simplicity.

Avicenna scholars know well that Avicenna aspired to present his metaphysics in the form of an Aristotelian science. The mélange of topics that make up Avicenna’s Metaphysics often appears disjointed and rambling, making it difficult to see how successful he was in this aspiration. Daniel D. De Haan’s book provides an aerial view of Avicenna’s Metaphysics, which argues that Avicenna succeeded. More specifically, De Haan suggests how Avicenna’s conception of the “necessary” links the general subject of metaphysics to its ultimate goal. In this respect, De Haan’s work is less of a commentary on Avicenna’s Metaphysics than a metacommentary. Thus...

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...

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

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.

While the little-known thinker Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mas'ūdī may have had doubts concerning the Ishārāt of the great Persian philosopher Avicenna, no one should have doubts concerning Ayman Shihadeh's brilliant Doubts on Avicenna: A Study and Edition of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mas'ūdī's Commentary on the Ishārāt. Professor Shihadeh's volume is a rich study of Mas'ūdī's alMabāḥith wa-l-shukūk 'alā Kitāb al-Ishārāt, which additionally offers the first critical edition of that work. Doubts on Avicenna affords the reader a snapshot of the middle period of medieval Arabic philosophy and Islamic theology (ca. eleventh to fourteenth...

The dissertation examines the temporal theories of Aristotle and the Muslim Aristotelian, Ibn Sina . After considering Aristotelian science and sketching Aristotle's theory of physics, the dissertation picks up a series of puzzles concerning the reality of time. The central puzzle is a dilemma, which seemingly shows that the now can neither change nor remain the same. The dilemma is important, since one's solution to it affects the way one envisions time. Aristotle's solution, I argue, is to show how the now remains the same. Thus he adopts a "static" theory of time, i.e., time is a magnitude marked off in motion by an unchanging now, and although time is a magnitude of motion, it itself does not flow or change. In contrast, Ibn Sina, who employs much of the same vocabulary as Aristotle, develops a "dynamic" theory of time, which envisions time as the "flow" of an ever changing now, and thus he attempts to explain how the now changes. The dissertation concludes with an application of Aristotle and Ibn Sina's accounts of time to McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time and Sydney Shoemaker's contention that conceptually time does not require change. In the end I argue that time must be static and cannot "flow."

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