Bachir hussain avicenna biography

One of us i. Then contemplate the following: can he be assured of the existence of himself? He does not have any doubt in that his self exists, without thereby asserting that he has any exterior limbs, nor any bachir hussain avicenna biography organs, neither heart nor brain, nor any one of the exterior things at all; but rather he can affirm the existence of himself, without thereby asserting there that this self has any extension in space.

Even if it were possible for him in that state to imagine a hand or any other limb, he would not imagine it as being a part of his self, nor as a condition for the existence of that self; for as you know that which is asserted is different from that which is not asserted and that which is inferred is different from that which is not inferred.

Therefore the self, the existence of which has been asserted, is a unique characteristic, in as much that it is not as such the same as the body or the limbs, which have not been ascertained. Thus that which is ascertained i. However, Avicenna posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent Intellect.

The first knowledge of the flying person would be "I am," affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as the flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that "I am" is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. The body is unnecessary; in relation to it, the soul is its perfection.

It was used as the standard medical textbook in the Islamic world and Europe up to the 18th century. Avicenna considered whether events like rare diseases or disorders have natural causes. This view of medical phenomena anticipated developments in the Enlightenment by seven centuries. Avicenna wrote on Earth sciences such as geology in The Book of Healing.

Either they are the effects of upheavals of the crust of the earth, such as might occur during a violent earthquake, or they are the effect of water, which, cutting itself a new route, has denuded the valleys, the strata being of different kinds, some soft, some hard It would require a long period of time for all such changes to be accomplished, during which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size.

In the Al-Burhan On Demonstration section of The Book of HealingAvicenna discussed the philosophy of science and described an early scientific method of inquiry. He discussed 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 bachir hussain avicenna biography principles of a science?

Avicenna then added two further methods for arriving at the first principles : the ancient Aristotelian method of induction istiqraand 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.

An early formal system of temporal logic was studied by Avicenna. He stated, "Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned. In mechanicsAvicenna, in The Book of Healingdeveloped a theory of motionin which he made a distinction between the inclination tendency to motion and force of a projectileand 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.

The theory of motion presented by Avicenna was probably influenced by the 6th-century Alexandrian scholar John Philoponus. Avicenna's is a less sophisticated variant of the theory of impetus developed by Buridan in the 14th century. It is unclear if Buridan was influenced by Avicenna, or by Philoponus directly. In opticsAvicenna was among those who argued that light had a speed, observing 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.

Independent observation had demonstrated to him that the bow is not formed in the dark cloud but rather in the very thin mist lying between the cloud and the sun or observer. The cloud, he thought, serves as the background of this thin substance, much as a quicksilver lining is placed upon the rear surface of the glass in a mirror. Ina Latin text entitled Speculum Tripartitum stated the following regarding Avicenna's theory on heat :.

Avicenna says in his book of heaven and earth, that heat is generated from motion in external things. Avicenna's legacy in classical 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".

Avicenna's psychology requires that connection between the body and soul be strong enough to ensure the soul's individuation, but weak enough to allow for its immortality. Avicenna grounds his psychology on physiology, which means his account of the soul is one that deals almost entirely with the natural science of the body and its abilities of perception.

Thus, the philosopher's connection between the soul and body is explained almost entirely by his understanding of perception; in this way, bodily perception interrelates with the immaterial human intellect. In sense perception, the perceiver senses the form of the object; first, by perceiving features of the object by our external senses.

This sensory information is supplied to the internal senses, which merge all the pieces into a whole, unified conscious experience. This process of perception and abstraction is the nexus of the soul and body, for the material body may only perceive material objects, while the immaterial soul may only receive the immaterial, universal forms.

The way the soul and body interact in the final abstraction of the universal from the concrete particular is the key to their relationship and interaction, which takes place in the physical body. The soul completes the action of intellection by accepting forms that have been abstracted from matter. This process requires a concrete particular material to be abstracted into the universal intelligible immaterial.

The material and immaterial interact through the Active Intellect, which is a "divine light" containing the intelligible forms. Avicenna's astronomical writings had some influence on later writers, although in general his work could be considered less developed than that of ibn al-Haytham or al-Biruni. One important feature of his writing is that he considers mathematical astronomy a separate discipline from astrology.

This is possible as there was a transit on 24 Maybut ibn Sina did not give the date of his observation and modern scholars have questioned whether he could have observed the transit from his location at that time; he may have mistaken a sunspot for Venus. He used his transit observation to help establish that Venus was, at least sometimes, below the Sun in the geocentric model[ ] i.

He also wrote the Summary of the Almagest based on Ptolemy's Almagest with an appended treatise "to bring that which is stated in the Almagest and what is understood from Natural Science into conformity". For example, ibn Sina considers the motion of the solar apsiswhich Ptolemy had taken to be fixed. Avicenna was first to derive the attar of flowers from distillation [ ] and used steam distillation to produce essential oils such as rose essence, which he used as aromatherapeutic treatments for heart conditions.

Unlike al-Razi, Avicenna explicitly disputed the theory of the transmutation of substances commonly believed by alchemists :. Those of the chemical craft know well that no change can be effected in the different species of substances, though they can produce the appearance of such change. Four works on alchemy attributed to Avicenna were translated into Latin as: [ ].

Liber Aboali Abincine de Anima in arte Alchemiae was the most influential, having influenced later medieval chemists and alchemists such as Vincent of Beauvais. However, Anawati argues following Ruska that the de Anima is a fake by a Spanish author. Similarly the Declaratio is believed not to be actually by Avicenna. Almost half of Avicenna's works are versified.

From the depth of the black earth up to Saturn's apogee, All the problems of the universe have been solved by me. I have escaped from the coils of snares and deceits; I have unraveled all knots except the knot of Death. Avicenna has been recognized by both East and West as one of the bachir hussain avicenna biography figures in intellectual history.

Johannes Kepler cites Avicenna's opinion when discussing the causes of planetary motions in Chapter 2 of Astronomia Nova. George Sartonthe author of The History of Sciencedescribed Avicenna as "one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history" [ ] and called him "the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places, and times".

He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine. He is remembered in the Western history of medicine as a major historical figure who made important contributions to medicine and the European Renaissance. His medical texts were unusual in that where controversy existed between Galen and Aristotle's views on medical matters such as anatomyhe preferred to side with Aristotle, where necessary updating Aristotle's position to take into account post-Aristotelian advances in anatomical knowledge.

His influence following translation of the Canon was such that from the early fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries he was ranked with Hippocrates and Galen as one of the acknowledged authorities, princeps medicorum "prince of physicians". The Avicenna Prizeestablished inis awarded every two years by UNESCO and rewards individuals and groups for their achievements in the field of ethics in science.

The Avicenna Directories —15; now the World Directory of Medical Schools list universities and schools where doctors, public health practitioners, pharmacists and others, are educated. The original project team stated:. Why Avicenna? He has had a lasting influence on the development of medicine and health sciences. The use of Avicenna's name symbolises the worldwide partnership that is needed for the promotion of health services of high quality.

It now sits in the Vienna International Center. The film is set in Bukhara at the turn of the millennium. In his book The Physician Noah Gordon tells the story of a young English medical apprentice who disguises himself as a Jew to travel from England to Persia and learn from Avicenna, the great master of his time. The novel was adapted into a feature film, The Physicianin Avicenna was played by Ben Kingsley.

The treatises of Avicenna influenced later Muslim thinkers in many areas including theology, philology, mathematics, astronomy, physics and music. His works numbered almost volumes on a wide range of subjects, of which around have survived. In particular, volumes of his surviving works concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine.

Avicenna wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to him. His LogicMetaphysicsPhysicsand De Caeloare treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian doctrine[ ] though Metaphysics demonstrates a significant departure from the brand of Neoplatonism known as Aristotelianism in Avicenna's world; Arabic philosophers [ who?

The Logic and Metaphysics have been extensively reprinted, the latter, e. Some of his shorter essays on medicine, logic, etc. The larger, Al-Shifa' Sanatioexists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima appeared at Pavia as the Liber Sextus Naturaliumand the long account of Avicenna's philosophy given by Muhammad al-Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'.

A shorter form of the work is known as the An-najat Liberatio. The Latin editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monastic editors confess that they applied. Avicenna's works further include: [ ] [ ]. Avicenna created a new scientific vocabulary that had not previously existed in Persian. The Danishnama covers such topics as logic, metaphysics, music theory and other sciences of his time.

It has been translated into English by Parwiz Morewedge in Persian poetry from Avicenna is recorded in various manuscripts and later anthologies such as Nozhat al-Majales. Avicenna served the various local rulers in these cities certainly in his dual capacity as physician and political counselor, functions he had assumed already back home, but also as scientist-in-residence.

Engaging in science and philosophy during the first three Abbasid centuries — in Islam was done mostly under the political patronage of the rulers and the ruling elite who were the sponsors and also among the consumers of the scientific production. It was certainly a matter of prestige for a ruler to be flanked by the top scientists of his day, but patronage of the sciences was also seen, politically more importantly, as legitimizing his right to whatever throne he was occupying.

As a result, many a ruler evinced sheer interest in science itself out of a desire to appear knowledgeable and participated in scientific debates, usually conducted in political fora. Science was much more integrally related to the social and political life and discourse during this period, which is also a significant factor in its rapid spread and development in the Islamic world.

Bachir hussain avicenna biography

His productivity never flagged, even during these years that were militarily and politically turbulent. He died in in Hamadhan and was buried there. A mausoleum in that city today purports to be his. Despite his peregrinatory life spent in historically turbulent times and areas, including the frequently unfavorable personal circumstances in which he found himself as recounted in the Autobiography and Biography, GohlmanAvicenna was terribly productive, even by the standards of the highly prolific authors writing in Arabic in medieval Islam.

In the Autobiography he says that by the time he was eighteen he had mastered all subjects in philosophy without anything new having come to him since Gohlman30— Even though the Autobiography has particular philosophical points to make discussed in the next sectionthis is no mere boast. There are reports that he wrote major portions of his greatest work, The Curewithout any books to consult Gohlman58; transl.

This is also evident in his disregard rather than neglect? Avicenna could write fast and with great precision, sacrificing nothing in analytical depth. At the same time, however, given his undisputed fame and immense intellectual authority that he exercised soon after his death, pseudepigraphy became a major factor multiplying the works attributed to him Reisman and Accordingly, some medieval bibliographies of his works and some modern ones, based on the former list close to three hundred titles, though a recent sober tally of them brings the authentic writings down to fewer than one hundred, ranging from essays of a few pages to multi-volume sets, and flags the pseudepigraphs that need to be assessed and authenticated Gutas a, Appendix, — Much work still remains to be done in this regard.

Avicenna wrote in different genres, but his major innovation was the development of the summa philosophiaea comprehensive work that included all parts of philosophy as classified in the late antique Alexandrian and early Islamic tradition cited above. This was due as much to his own philosophical training, which followed this curriculum, as to the earliest commissions he received while still in Bukhara for works that would encompass all philosophy; but then these commissions inevitably reflect the broad philosophical culture of the period that viewed science and philosophy as an integral whole.

It runs to twenty-two large volumes in the Cairo edition —83and its contents exhibit all the parts of philosophy in the Aristotelian tradition which they reproduce, revise, adjust, expand, and re-present, as follows:. Avicenna did not treat all of these subjects in each one of his bachir hussain avicenna biographies, but he varied their contents and emphasis depending on the specific purpose for which he composed them.

He developed a style of supple Arabic expository prose, complete with technical philosophical terminology, that remained standard thenceforth. Toward the end of his life Avicenna wrote two more summae in slightly divergent modes. The purpose in this, for which he borrowed the bachir hussain avicenna biography of late antique Aristotelian commentarial tradition explaining why Aristotle had developed a cryptic style of writing, was to train the student by providing not whole arguments and fully articulated theories but only pointers and reminders to them which the student would complete himself.

The book, in two parts, deals with logic in the first and with physics, metaphysics, and metaphysics of the rational soul in the second. It proved hugely popular as a succinct though frequently amphibolous statement of his mature philosophy, open to interpretation, and it became the object of repeated commentaries throughout the centuries, apparently as Avicenna must have intended.

Other than in the summae, Avicenna wrote comprehensively on all philosophy in two major and massive works, both in about twenty volumes, both now lost. Some marginal notes on De animasurviving independently as transcribed in a manuscript, have the same approach and manifestly belong to the same period and project GS 11c; Gutas b. Independent treatises on individual subjects written by Avicenna deal with most subjects, but especially with those for which there was greater demand by his sponsors and in which he was particularly interested, notably logic, the soul, and the metaphysics of the rational soul.

He also wrote what amounts to open letters depicting the controversies in which he was involved and seeking arbitration or repudiating calumniatory charges against him GPW 1—3. Avicenna lived his philosophy, and his desire to communicate it beyond what his personal circumstances required, as an intellectual in the public eye, is manifest in the various compositional styles and different registers of language that he used.

He wrote with the purpose of reaching all layers of literate society, but also with an eye to posterity. His reach was as global in its aspirations as his system was all-encompassing in its comprehensiveness; and history bore him out. The Autobiography, written at a time when Avicenna had reached his philosophical maturity, touches upon a number of issues that he felt were highly significant in his formation as a thinker and accordingly point the way to his approach to philosophy and his philosophical aims and orientation.

These were, first, his understanding of the structure of philosophical knowledge all intellectual knowledge, that is as a unified whole, which is reflected in the classification of the sciences he studied; second, his critical evaluation of all past science and philosophy, as represented in his assessment of the achievements and shortcomings of previous philosophers after he had read their books in the Samanid library, which led to the realization that philosophy must be updated; and third, his emphasis on having been an autodidact points to the human capability of acquiring the highest knowledge rationally by oneself, and leads to a comprehensive study of all functions of the rational soul and how it acquires knowledge epistemology as well as to an inquiry into its origins, destination, activities, and their consequences eschatology.

Accordingly Avicenna set himself the task of presenting and writing about philosophy as an integral whole and not piecemeal and occasionalistically; bringing philosophy up to date; and studying how the human soul intellect knows as the foundation of his theory of knowledge, logical methodology, and the relation between the celestial and terrestrial realms, or the divine and human.

The implementation of the first task, the treatment of all philosophy as a unified bachir hussain avicenna biography, though historically seemingly unachievable, was accomplished by Avicenna almost without effort. Aristotle himself stands at the very beginning of this process. He clearly had a conception of the unity of all philosophy, which could be systematically presented on the basis of the logical structure set forth in the Posterior Analytics Barnesp.

When philosophy was resuscitated after a hiatus of about two centuries ca. But the social context in which philosophy now found itself had changed. Avicenna complied, and thus was born the first philosophical summa treating in a systematic and consistent fashion within the covers of a single book all the branches of logic and theoretical philosophy as classified in the Aristotelian tradition.

That Avicenna was able to produce such a work and repeat it seven more times thenceforth is of course a tribute to his genius universally acknowledged both then and nowbut that the request for it should have come from his society is telling evidence of its cultural attitude regarding science. It presented for the first time to the world a comprehensive, unified, and internally self-consistent account of reality, along with the methodological tools wherewith to validate it logic —it presented a scientific system as a worldview, difficult to resist or even refute, given its self-validating properties.

This was good for studying philosophy and disseminating it. But by the same token, and by its very nature, this worldview so clearly presented, documented, and validated, set itself up against other ideologies in the society with contending worldviews. Up until that time, philosophical treatises on discrete subjects and abstruse commentaries, the two dominant forms of philosophical discourse, as just indicated, were matters for specialists that could not and did not claim endorsement or allegiance from society as a whole; the philosophical summa did.

And Avicenna who wrote in different styles and genres to reach as many people as possible, as also noted above, clearly intended as much. Performance of the first task, necessarily entailed the second, bringing philosophy up to date. The philosophical knowledge that Avicenna received was neither complete nor homogeneous. He had no access to the entirety of even the very lacunose information that we now have about the philosophical movements during the years separating him from Aristotle Avicenna gives this quite accurate number himselfbut could view the entire tradition as essentially Aristotelian.

The lesser philosophical schools of antiquity—the Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics, and Pythagoreans, who had ceased to exist long before late antiquity—he knew mostly as names with certain basic views or sayings affiliated with them. Those whom we call Neoplatonists he knew as commentators of Aristotle along with the rest, and even Plotinus and Proclus were available to him in translated excerpts under the name of Aristotle, as the Theology of Aristotle and The Pure Good respectively.

However, both the substantive and temporal diversity of these sources in the tradition presented grave inconsistencies and divergent tendencies, to say nothing of anachronisms, while the surviving work even of Aristotle himself contained discrepancies and incomplete treatments. Faced with this situation, Avicenna set himself the task of revising and updating philosophy, as an internally self-consistent and complete system that accounts for all reality and is logically verifiable, by correcting errors in the tradition, deleting unsustainable arguments and theses, sharpening the focus of others, and expanding and adding to the subjects that demanded discussion.

An area that needed to be added most urgently in both the theoretical and practical parts of philosophy, if all reality was to be covered by his system, was all manifestations of religious life and paranormal events. Performance of this second task, in turn, entailed the third, the accuracy and verifiability of the knowledge which would constitute the contents of his updated philosophy.

Verifiability depends on two interdependent factors for the person doing the verification: following a productive method and having the mental apparatus to employ that method and understand its results. The method Avicenna adopted already at the start of his career was logic, and the mental apparatus wherewith we know involved an understanding and study of the human, rational soul.

He wrote more, and more frequently, on these two subjects than on anything else. Lameer Marmura Acknowledging the truth of a categorical statement meant verifying it, and this could only be done by taking that statement as the conclusion of a syllogism and then constructing the syllogism that would conclude it. There being three terms in a syllogism, two of which, the minor and the major, are present in the conclusion, the syllogism that leads to that conclusion can be constructed only if one figures out or guesses correctly what the middle term is that explains the connection between the two extreme terms.

This theory made the core of syllogistic verification by means of hitting upon the middle term the one indispensable element of all certain intellectual knowledge, and it explained why people differ in their ability to apply this syllogistic method by presupposing that they possess a varying talent for it, as with all human faculties. In essence, following this method of logical verification meant for Avicenna examining the texts of Aristotle, read in the order in which they are presented in the curriculum, and testing the validity of every paragraph.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. More From encyclopedia. Aviation Sales Company. Aviation Regulatory Agencies. Aviation Physiology. Aviation Fuel. Aviation Emissions and Contrails.

Aviation Emissions. Aviation Distributors and Manufacturers Association. Aviat, Francesca Salesia, Bl. Avian Song. Avian Migration and Navigation. Avian Flight. Aviad, Yeshayahu. Avid Technology Inc. Avida ZlotnickYehuda Leib. It appears in the oldest known syllabus of teaching given to the School of Medicine at Montpellier, dating fromand in all subsequent ones until In the Muslim world, his philosophy was instrumental in the emergence of Ishraqi Illuminist school of Suhrawardi.

In the West, Thomas Aquinas used some of his proofs in the Catholic theology and although the Renaissance brought a violent reaction against him, Ibn Sina holds a secure place in the history of Western philosophy through his influence on major Christian philosophers.