: 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. (shrink)

As for Avicenna the human soul is a complete substance which does not inhere in the body nor is imprinted in it, asserting its survival after the death of the body seems easy. Yet, he needs the body to explain its individuation. The paper analyzes Avicenna's arguments in the De anima sections, V, 3 & 4, of the Shifā ' in order to explore the exact causal relation there is between the human soul and its body and confronts these arguments (...) with relevant passages in the Metaphysics. It argues that the causal relation between body and soul remains obscure and that, though Avicenna claims that there is a personal immortality and that the disembodied soul remains individuated, he does not provide a satisfactory ontological account for it. (shrink)

The eleventh-century philosopher and physician Abu Ali ibn Sina was known in the West by his Latinized name Avicenna. An analysis of the sources and evolution of Avicenna's metaphysics, this book focuses on the answers he and his predecessors gave to two fundamental pairs of questions: what is the soul and how does it cause the body; and what is God and how does He cause the world? To respond to these challenges, Avicenna invented new concepts and distinctions and reinterpreted (...) old ones. The author concludes that Avicenna's innovations are a turning point in the history of metaphysics. Avicenna's metaphysics is the culmination of a period of synthesis during which philosophers fused together a Neoplatonic project with a Peripatetic project. Avicenna also stands at the beginning of a period during which philosophers sought to integrate the Arabic version of the earlier synthesis with Islamic doctrinal theology. Avicenna's metaphysics significantly influenced European scholastic thought, but it had an even more profound impact on Islamic intellectual history—the philosophical problems and opportunities associated with the Avicennian synthesis continued to be debated up to the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

ACCORDING TO MANY of the most authoritative interpreters and commentators of Aristotle, there is in his thought "a discrepancy between the real and the intelligible," that is to say, a failure to reconcile the requirements of his ontology with those of his logic and epistemology. From the point of view of his ontology, the individual, in effect the substance provided with matter, is basic, while the universal is derivative. From the point of view of his logic and epistemology, only the (...) "ideal," that is to say, what is universal and formal, is intelligible; and therefore, if the intelligible coincided with the real, this would also have to be basic ontologically. This conflict in his system is usually attributed to the existence of two incompatible strands of thought, one of which is close to a form of empiricism and is typically Aristotelian, while the other is "idealistic" and derives from Plato. (shrink)