Roohollah Fadaei

The book *Avicenna* by Jon McGinnis, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri, is one of the most comprehensive studies in English offering a holistic picture of Avicenna's intellectual system. Published in Oxford University Press’s prestigious *Great Medieval Thinkers* series, this work takes an analytical and systematic approach to examining Avicenna’s place in Islamic philosophy. In ten chapters, McGinnis first addresses Avicenna's life, works, and intellectual background. In subsequent chapters, he explores the fundamental aspects of Avicenna’s thought, including logic, natural philosophy, psychology (the study of the soul), metaphysics, value theory, and medicine. At the end of the work, he dedicates a section to Avicenna’s influence on later intellectual traditions. Throughout the book, the author pays close attention to the historical context in which concepts were formed while analytically reconstructing Avicenna’s arguments and clarifying the internal coherence of his system. McGinnis aims to demonstrate that Avicenna was not merely a commentator on Aristotle but the founder of one of the most cohesive philosophical systems of the medieval period, whose influence persisted for centuries in both Islamic and Christian traditions. Dr. Roohollah Fadaei, faculty member of the Department of Islamic Philosophy at the Iranian Research Institute of Philosophy, has translated this work into Persian—published by Imam Sadiq University Press—striving to provide Persian-speaking readers interested in Avicennan studies with a scholarly and up-to-date resource.

Experience, as a methodological term, during the history of science, was noticed mostly by two traditions: medical tradition and Aristotelian logical-philosophical tradition. Galen and Avicenna are among rare scholars who were engaged in both Aristotelian logic and Hippocratic humoral medicine. As a result, reconciling experiential method and rational one was among their main methodological problems. Using the method of text-oriented analytic interpretation and critical analysis, the main goal of this research is to show how the project of rationalizing the experience was progressed in Avicennian methodology compared with its Galenic version. Although Galen in his concept of experience is extremely influenced by medical empiricism, he promoted the practical accuracy of this method and also acknowledged it as a method of discovery by introducing some “qualifying criteria”. Nevertheless, he did not engage in the theoretical issues regarding the rationalizing the experience, and just insisted on using both experience and reason –especially Aristotelian demonstration- in the procedure of science acquisition. Avicenna’s main contribution to the progress of experiential method is not concerned with practical aspect, but theoretical one. According to his sophisticated system of soul faculties, unlike Galen who explained the procedure of experience just based on external senses and memory, his analysis also applied the internal faculties of common sense, estimation, recollection, compositive imagination and reason. Rational faculty gives a rational and demonstrative structure to the experience from two aspects: formally by forming a syllogism and materially by using “coincidental rule”, which is a derivative from principle of causality, as the major premise of that syllogism. This causal analysis of experience enabled Avicenna to propose very precise theoretical explanations of the necessity of experience-based propositions, their conditioned universality, their difference from inductive propositions, and finally, it explicated how the procedure of experience may culminate in wrong results.

This research, using the method of text-oriented analytic interpretation and critical analysis, comprehensively investigates the experimentation theory of Avicenna in both theoretical and practical way. Analyzing Avicenna's different interpretations of experimentation shows that reaching experimental knowledge is through a cooperation between a group of animal perceptual faculties (external senses, common sense, estimation and memory) and faculty of theoretical intellect. Moreover, experimental propositions have three main features; they are affirmative, certain and conditionally universal. According to these features and also the way in which they are formed, they are set apart from sense-data and inductive propositions. Avicenna, beside his theoretical discussions, practically applied his experimental method to natural sciences studies such as medicine, biology, and meteorology. Investigating the application of his theory shows that there is no conflict between his theoretical and practical principles. All differences return to either elaborating the theoretical principles or being exclusive for practical issues. Nevertheless, this theory, from the viewpoint of internal coherence, is subject to three objections: how we can make sure that something has happened permanently or for the most part? which source did we acquire the coincidental principle from? And according to his opinion about sense-data propositions, can we believe in certainty of experimental knowledge? Another group of critical remarks is based on new studies and theories suggested by science philosophers during the recent century. The issues which are mentioned in this research are: qualitative problem of confirmation, difference between law-like and contingent hypotheses, induction about unobservable or one-instance entities, and problem of theory-ladenness of evidence. These problems indicate the defects of Avicenna's theory of experimentation, and unless we fill these gaps and find satisfactory solutions for them, any attempt for reconstructing his theory will be doomed to failure.

Since Avicenna considers the main function of the estimative faculty to be the apprehension of intentions (maʿānī), other functions of this faculty must be understood in light of this form of apprehension. His primary and well-known meaning of intention is something inherently nonsensible that nonetheless exists within the particular sensibles. These intentions can generally be categorized under the duality of agreeableness (muwāfaqa) and disagreeableness (muẖālafa). Thus, a connection can be established between this class of intentions and particular accidents of existent qua existent. However, intentions never lose their relational aspect to the sensibles neither in the actualization nor in conceptualization. Avicenna also considers another kind of intention apprehended by estimation. This type of intention is nothing but the relation among the sensible forms, which is perceived from the external sensible objects and entities. Although this intention is non-sensible, unlike the first type, it is derived from and reducible to sensibles. Based on this second kind of intention, one can explain how, in estimative propositions (wahmiyyāt), judgments about sensibles are generalized to non-sensible objects. Furthermore, this generalization, if applied to the sensibles and their attributes, leads to the formation of induction. Given that Avicenna considers methodic experience (tajriba) to be the result of the conjunction between sensory induction and syllogism, it can be concluded that the estimative faculty and its apprehended intentions play a central role in the formation of empirical method and knowledge.

Galen is one of the most prominent thinkers and scientists in antiquity, who paid special attention to the methodology of natural sciences. On the other hand, the transition of Galenic tradition to the Islamic world had a wide impact on different areas of thought, one of which was methodology. Accordingly, studying Galen's scientific methodology plays a significant role in a true understanding of the scientific tradition in the Islamic medieval ages. This article, using the method of text-oriented analytic interpretation, expounds on the status of reason as one of the two main elements of Galen's methodology. In his view, the reason is the main part of the human soul which provides the scientific method both formally and materially. Its formal functions, pertaining to the logical scope, are as follows: demonstration, division and synthesis, definition, similarity and dissimilarity, analysis and synthesis, and indication. On the other hand, in a material sense, the mind provides the necessary prerequisites for the formation of proof and implication by understanding rational axioms.

In Avicenna’s thought, one of the most important features of experience-based propositions, whereby they are classified among the principles of demonstration, is their possession of certainty. Nevertheless, Avicenna casted doubt on their absolute and perfect certainty in some of his passages. This research, using the method of text-oriented analytic interpretation and critical analysis, explicates how the method of experience, according to Avicenna’s own theoretical and practical foundations, cannot yield certainty. Theoretically, the method of experience which uses the observations which occur mostly (not always) cannot bring about pure certainty. But a broader theoretical analysis can be proposed that includes even the situations in which observations always occur in the same way. In this respect, since the experience-based propositions are gained from sense-data, and because according to Avicenna’s final analysis of these propositions they possess just pseudo-certainty, any kind of experience can also produce only pseudo-certainty. This result is not in conflict with Avicenna’s innovational doctrine about the experience-based propositions, according to which these propositions are based on a demonstration propter quid, because he has already explained in his logical works that a demonstration propter quid which its minor premise is not perpetual cannot yield certainty. In addition, if it is taken for granted that the method of experience can produce certainty, it is, practically, very difficult to exactly determine and discover the essential cause, whereby reaching the certainty will become very hard and rare.

The theory of the first ruler of the Virtuous City is one of the most important subjects of al-Farabi's political science. Using the method of text-oriented analytic interpretation, firstly, sixteen epistemic and non-epistemic characteristics of the first ruler are extracted; the most prominent of which are perfection of rational and imaginative faculties. In addition, the main responsibility of the first ruler, i.e. supplying the supreme happiness of the citizens, is explained through three minor duties: establishing the state, giving rise to the virtues and eliminating the vices, and resolving the problems of the state. Then, it is discussed that this theory is based on six foundations in al-Farabi's philosophical system, including human social innate disposition, theory of individual souls, concept of happiness, and status of active intellect, volition and religion(prophecy) in man's happiness. Finally, it is concluded that the theory of the first ruler, which is based on al-Farabi's philosophical foundations, enjoys internal coherence and is not in any sense imitative.

Specifying the relationship between Aristotle and Plato philosophies was one of the main concerns for Platonic philosophers since the first century BC. Although Porphyry and most of his successors upheld the harmony between these two philosophical systems, Syrianus and Proclus, from Athenian Neoplatonic school, supported the critical approach to Aristotle's philosophy. This research, using the analytic method, shows that by establishment of a new branch of Neoplatonism in Alexandria and under the teachings of Ammonius son of Hermias, not only was the idea of harmony between Aristotle and Plato philosophies revived, but also it was portrayed more coherently and promulgated systematically through educational materials. Alexandrian philosophers followed this harmonizing project in two ways: sometimes they methodically and directly talked about this harmony, and in some cased they try, in practice, to reconcile the two philosophies by resolving the apparent conflicts. Two vivid examples of this reconciliation are harmonizing First Mover of Aristotle with Demiurge of Plato, and acknowledging the Platonic Forms as the thoughts of Aristotelian self- thinking God.

Avicenna, beside his theoretical discussions about experimentation, practically applied his experimental method to natural sciences studies such as medicine, biology, and meteorology. His theoretical discussions subsume propositions concerning the conditions under which experimental knowledge is attained, the components of this knowledge and its functions. Some of these propositions are as follows: necessity of recurrent observations for acquiring experimental knowledge, certainty plus conditional universality of such knowledge, and its role as demonstrative premises. Investigating the application of his theory in natural sciences propound two new features which were not elaborated in the theoretical discussions: fallibility of experimental knowledge and necessity of systematic observation. This research, using the analytic method and referring to both philosophical and scientific works of Avicenna, clarifies that a comprehensive definition of experimentation is dependent on considering extracted points from practical application of experimental knowledge, beside its theoretical components