Gersonides rejects the basic tenets of the Aristotelian theory of natural motion, and offers an alternative original account. He does not introduce his theory systematically nor argues openly with Aristotle, but conveyes his ideas through a subtle and sophisticated work of exegesis. Developing ideas of Aristotle, Averroes and Themistius, he eventually ends up with a different theory. Gersonides presupposes neither that there are absolute natural places, which are the final causes of natural motion, nor that there is inclination in the (...) element, which is the efficient cause, nor that motion in a straight line is natural to the elements. He explains the motion of a body only in terms of its relations to adjacent bodies in contact with it. The body rises when the medium surrounding it is heavier and sinks when it is lighter. The distance from the innermost celestial sphere, rather than "natural places," determines the heaviness or lightness of the medium and the structure of the sublunar region. (shrink)

The more passages one examines in the translations from Arabic to Latin and from Arabic to English and other modern languages, the more mistakes one comes across in the translation of the Arabic expression ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal . The mistakes stem from the failure to distinguish between two senses of the expression, one an adverb, and the other a famous philosophic concept. Failing to distinguish between the two senses, the translators translated the phrase literally, often with unsatisfactory results. In this (...) paper, I shall indicate a Greek word which was rendered by the Arabic ‘alā al-qaṣd al-awwal. I shall refer to some English translations from the Arabic and show how wrong they are. I shall suggest that in Arabic philosophy itself al-Fārābī, rather than Avicenna, may have been the origin of the philosophic concepts of “first and second intentions.” I shall point out that although these concepts may have been introduced into Latin scholasticism by Raymond Lull, he could not have derived them from the Logic of al-Ghazālī, as has been alleged. (shrink)