Avicenna
Ibn Sina, Latinized as Avicenna, is the name by which Abū 'Alī al-Husayn ibn 'Abd Allāh is known in Western tradition ibn Sĩnã (in Persian: ابو علی الحسین ابن عبد الله ابن سینا; in Arabic: أبو علي الحسین بن عبدالله بن سینا; Bukhara, Great Khurasan, c. 980-Hamadan, 1037), a polymath, physician, philosopher, Persian astronomer and scientist belonging to the Golden Age of Islam. He wrote about three hundred books on different subjects, predominantly philosophy and medicine.
His most famous texts are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, also known as the Avicenna Canon. His disciples called him Cheikh el-Raïs, that is, "prince of the wise", the greatest of doctors, the Master par excellence, or the third Master (after Aristotle and Al-Farabi).
He is also one of the greatest physicians of all time and an important forerunner of modern medicine.
Cultural context
Avicenna created an extensive body of literature during the period generally known as the Golden Age of Islam, when translations of Greco-Roman, Persian, and Hindu texts were widely studied. Greco-Latin texts of the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian schools and the Kindi school were annotated, redone, and substantially developed by Islamic intellectuals, who also evolved from Hindu and Persian systems of mathematics, astronomy, algebra, trigonometry, and medicine. The Samanid dynasty in eastern Persia, called Greater Khorasan, and in Central Asia, as well as the Buyid dynasty in western Persia and Iraq, fostered a climate conducive to cultural and academic development. Under the Samanids, Bukhara rivaled Baghdad as the cultural capital of the Islamic world.
The study of the Qur'an and hadith thrived in this environment. Philosophy (fiqh) and theology (kalam) also developed mainly at the hands of Avicenna and his opponents. Ar-Razí and Al-Farabi provided the necessary methodology and knowledge about medicine and philosophy. Avicenna had access to large libraries in Balkh, Khwarezm, Gorgan, Rayy, Isfahan, and Hamadan. Several texts, such as l & # 39; Ahd with Bahmanyar , show the debate of the philosophical points of the great scholars of his time. Nizami Aruzi describes how Avicenna, before leaving Khwarezm, met Abu-Rayhan al-Biruni (a famous scientist and astronomer), Abu-Nasr al-Iraqi (a famous mathematician), Abu-Sahl al-Massihí (a respected philosopher) and Abu-l-Khary Khammar (an important physician).
Biography
Avicenna, or Ibn Siná (as it was in Persian), was born on August 20, 980 in Afshana, (Khorasan province, Transoxsiana, now in Uzbekistan), near Bukhara. Her parents were also Muslims.
Apparently, he was early in his interest in natural sciences and medicine; so much so that at the age of fourteen he studied alone. He was sent to study calculus with a merchant, Al-Natili. He had a good memory and could recite the entire Qur'an.
When his father became an official, he accompanied him to Bukhara, then the capital of the Samanids, and there he studied the knowledge of the time, such as physics, mathematics, logical philosophy, and the Koran. He was influenced by a treatise by Al-Farabi which enabled him to overcome the difficulties he encountered in the study of Aristotle's Metaphysics. This precocity in studies was also reflected in a precocity in his career, since at sixteen he was already directing famous doctors and at seventeen he was famous as a doctor for having saved the life of the emir Nuh ibn Mansur.
He got permission to enter the royal library, where he furthered his knowledge of mathematics, music, and astronomy. By the time he came of age he had studied all the known sciences. He became court physician and scientific adviser until the fall of the Samanid kingdom in 999.
In Hamadan, the Buyid emir Shams ad-Dawla chose him as minister. He then imposed a grueling work schedule, dedicating himself to public work by day and science by night. He worked and directed the composition of the Shifa and the medical Canon. He had the help of two disciples who shared the re-reading of the pamphlets of the two works, one of them being Al-Juzjani his secretary and biographer.
At the age of twenty, and through the mediation of Abū Bakr al-Barjuy, he wrote ten volumes, called The treatise on the resultant and the result, and a study of the customs of the time, known as Innocence and sin. With these books his fame as a writer, philosopher, doctor and astronomer spread throughout Persia, where he traveled.
In 1021, the death of Prince Shams al-Dawla and the beginning of the reign of his son Sama' ad-Dawla ambitions and grudges crystallized. Victim of political intrigues, Avicenna went to jail. Disguised as a dervish, he managed to escape and fled to Isfahan, next to the Kakuyid emir Ala ad-Dawla Muhammed.
At the age of thirty-two he began his masterpiece, the famous Canon of Medicine (translated into Latin by Gerardo de Cremona), which contains the organized collection of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge of his time in five volumes.
During an expedition to Hamadan, in present-day Iran, the philosopher suffered a serious intestinal crisis, which he had suffered for a long time and which he contracted, according to what they said, due to excess of work and pleasure. He tried to heal himself but his remedy was fatal. He died at the age of fifty-six in the month of June 1037, after having led a very hectic and eventful life, exhausted by overwork.
Impact
It had an influence of capital importance, since it supposes the presentation of Aristotelian thought before the Western thinkers of the Middle Ages. His works were translated into Latin in the 12th century, reinforcing Aristotelian doctrine in the West although strongly influenced by Platonic thought.
Avicenna declared that he had read Metaphysics more than forty times without fully understanding it, since he does not expose the origin of things as the work of a kind Creator. He mixed Aristotelian doctrine with Neoplatonic thought, in turn adapting the result to the Muslim world. He placed Reason (objective manifestation of the will of God himself) above all being and explained that with this we are called to seek perfection.
He also distinguished between the abstract essence and the concrete entity that does not require to exist, but exists because of the essence. In addition, the entity is made up of a necessary part (in this case Allah, who always exists) and a part of "what is possible" (the rest of the beings in the world, who only exist for one cause: the will of God). He also denies the immortality of the soul as an individual entity.
He cured the emir of Bukhara from a serious illness, who as a reward opened the doors of his great library for him. In addition to numerous works on medicine, he also wrote on philosophy, where he combined the Aristotelian tradition with Neoplatonic elements.
He had a great influence on later thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Buenaventura de Fidanza or Duns Escoto. He also raised a thought similar to Descartes long before Descartes: the indubitable knowledge of one's own existence.
In many books on philosophy, his thought is linked to that of Averroes from Córdoba, since they represent the approach of Islam (and the Near East in general) to Greek philosophy.
Although highly mystical, he treated the subject objectively. Asceticism was not enough for him; he believed that enlightenment should be sought as the final act of knowledge. Illumination is obtained through angels who act as a link between the celestial and terrestrial spheres. We can therefore say that Avicenna paved the way for a new branch of Islamic philosophy, the Wisdom of illumination or light, the so-called Híkmat al-Ishraq (Metaphysics of Light), inaugurated by his follower Suhrauardi.
His work
Variable in scope depending on the sources (276 titles for G. C. Anawati, 242 for Yahya Mahdavi), of which 200 are preserved, Avicenna's work is numerous and varied. Avicenna has written mainly in the learned language of his time, classical Arabic, but sometimes also in the vernacular, Persian.
One of his most famous texts is the Al Qanun, a canon of medicine also known as the Avicenna Canon, a 14-volume medical encyclopedia written around the year 1020. It is based on a combination of his own personal experience, medieval Islamic medicine, the writings of Galen, Sushruta and Charaka, as well as ancient Persian and Arabic medicine. The Canon is considered one of the most famous books in the history of medicine.
Avicenna's philosophical masterpiece is al-Shifah (The Healing), of a markedly encyclopedic nature. The epitome of it is al-Nayat ( Salvation ). Due to its size and the importance of the role it played, al-Shifá can be compared to al-Qanun. Published The Healing in six volumes (Cairo, 1952-1965), it is perhaps the largest philosophical work by a single man. It starts with logic and includes physics and metaphysics, botany and zoology, mathematics and music, and psychology.
In another great work, Kitab al-Isharat wa-l-tanbihat (Book of Guidelines and Warnings), he deals with themes of philosophy and mysticism, and dedicated three chapters to Sufism, which he also dealt with in thirty-two other books on the subject. In this work appears his famous argument of the Flying Man, predecessor of the Cartesian cogito, in which he stated that a man suspended in the air isolated, without any contact with anything, not even his own body, without seeing nor hear, he will affirm without a doubt that he exists and will intuit his own being.
He is the author of monuments, of more modest works, but also of short texts. His work covers the entire breadth of knowledge of his time:
- Logic, Linguistics and Poetry.
- Physics, Psychology and Medicine, Chemistry.
- Maths, Music and Astronomy.
- Moral and Economics.
- Metaphysics.
- Mysticism and comments of the Koran.
The personal purpose of the philosopher found its completion in oriental philosophy (hikmat mashriqiya), which took the form of a compilation of twenty-eight thousand topics. This work disappeared from Isfahan in 1034, and only a few fragments remain.
For several centuries, up until the 17th century, his Qanûn (' Canon') was the basis of teaching both in Europe, where he dethroned Galen, and in Asia.
He is responsible for the use of cassia, rhubarb, tamarind, etc.
Old Posts
Avicenna's works were published in Arabic, in Rome, in 1593, in-folio.
They were translated into Latin and their Canons or Precepts of Medicine were published, Venice, 1483, 1564 and 1683; his Philosophical Works, Venice, 1495; his First Metaphysics or Philosophy, Venice, 1495.
Pierre Vattier had translated all his works into French; only the Logic, Paris, 1658, in octavo was published.
Avicenna's Medicine
The Canon of Medicine
The Kitab Al Qanûn fi Al-Tibb ("Book of Medical Laws"), made up of five books, is Avicenna's major medical work.
Avicenna's influence
His Canon was very successful, eclipsing the earlier works of Al-Razi, Haly-Abbas, Abulcasis, and even the later works of Ibn-Al-Nafis. The Crusades from the 12th to the 17th century brought back to Europe the Canon of Medicine, which influenced the practice and teaching of Western medicine.
The work was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona between 1150 and 1187, and printed in Hebrew in Milan in 1473, then in Venice in 1527 and in Rome in 1593. Its influence was lasting and the Canon was only questioned from the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci rejected anatomy and Paracelsus burned it. It was the development of European science that would cause its obsolescence, as in the case of the description of the circulation of the blood made by William Harvey in 1628. However, this work marked the study of medicine for a long time and even in 1909, a class on Avicenna's medicine was given in Brussels.
Avicenna stands out in the fields of ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychology. He dwells a lot on the characteristics of the symptoms, describing all the cataloged diseases of the time, even those that concern psychiatry.
- It is the first to distinguish pleuresy, mediastinitis and subfrenic abscess.
- Describes the two forms of facial paralysis (central and peripheral)
- It gives the symptomatology of the diabetic.
- It can make the differential diagnosis between pylorine stenosis and stomach ulcer.
- Describes different variants of jaundice.
- It gives a description of the cataract, of the meningitis, etc.
- Preserve the role of rats in spreading the pest.
- It indicates that certain infections are transmitted by placentaria.
- It is the first to preconceive treatments by rectal lavatives.
- Discover that the blood part of the heart to go to the lungs, and return, and accurately expose the ventricles and valve system of the heart.
- It is the first to correctly describe the anatomy of the human eye.
- It also leaves the hypothesis that water and atmosphere would contain tiny vector organisms of some infectious diseases.
He can be considered the inventor of the tracheotomy, whose operating manual would be specified by the famous Arab surgeon Abulcasis from Córdoba. In the Renaissance, information was found on a similar intervention, carried out by the Italian physician Antonio Musa Brassavola.
But above all, Avicenna is interested in the means of maintaining health. He recommends the regular practice of sport or hydrotherapy in preventive and curative medicine. He insists on the importance of human relationships in maintaining good mental and somatic health.
Avicenna's medicine could be summed up in the introductory sentence of Urdjuza Fi-Tib' (Medicine poem): «Medicine is the art of preserving health and eventually curing the disease that has occurred in the body».
Philosophical doctrine
Avicenna belongs to the Baghdad school. His main line of action is based on the reconciliation between rational discourse and religion. In part, he adapts Al-Farabi's works to make them compatible with the Qur'an, and he also incorporates traditionally theological elements into philosophy, such as angels, to whom he grants a key role in his relationship with human beings, especially with the prophets. On a general level, he recognizes the East as a source of light, and tries to reassess Eastern philosophy and transmit it to the West; despite everything, many works on this subject have been lost.
To explain reality, Avicenna adopts an emanative system, typical of Neoplatonism. However, he maintains a scheme of knowledge that he picks up from the Aristotelian naturalist tradition: he distinguishes between sensation, imagination, possible intellect and agent intellect, which corresponds to to a gradation from the first possible abstraction, followed by non-sensible particular ideas, and culminating in general ideas. This triple hierarchy also applies to beings. It also delves into the relationship between essence and existence: a thing that is only exists if its existence is necessary. The creation made by God would correspond to this need.
Avicenna adapts Aristotle's separation between the possible intellect (patient, passive), and the agent intellect (active), and makes a more spiritualist interpretation. Thus, the active intellect actually considers it as belonging to God, and that it communicates in time to the human being, while the passive intellect belongs to the human being, but does not die in the body, since it believes in the immortality of the body. soul. In Avicenna's view, the patient intellect cannot do anything without the agent, so the human intellect is only potential. The existence of the agent intellect has to be done spiritually.
Avicenna is especially relevant in the history of philosophy for having made it easier for scholars to read Aristotle.
The mystical Orient
Tradition, in theosophy and Islamic mysticism, considers the mashriq (the East) as a world of light, and therefore that of the intelligences of the angels, unlike the maghrib (the West), which represents the sublunary world, world of darkness, where souls decline. This conception is explicit in Avicenna (in the symbolic account of Hayy ibn Yaqzan), and it will be even more so in his commentators and critics, such as in Suhrawardí.
Avicenna is the author of four texts on Eastern philosophy: Account of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, the Account of the Bird and the Account of Salâmân and Absâl.
- Relation of Hayy ibn Yaqzan: Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a child who is isolated on an island. Discover in case the universe that surrounds it is usually. This story is like an introduction to the East, the forms of the archangel of enlightenment, in opposition to the West and to the extreme west (place of pure matter). Hayy ibn Yaqzan personalizes Avicena in his relationship with the angel.
- Relation of the bird: this account responds to the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, undertakes his journey to the Far East, in the search for the absolute to get the "city of the king". The soul wakes up for itself. To the ecstasy of a mental ascension, crosses the valleys and canals of the cosmic mountain in the company of the angel.
- Relation of Salâmân and Absâl: this story describes the drama of the two heroes of the final part of Kitab al-Isharat wa-l-tanbihat. These two typical characters of two contemplative (or speculative) intellects are also found in Prometheus and Epimetheus, in a word: the celestial human being and the human being of flesh and blood. Thus, there is synchrony between the soul and its awakening and the visualization of its guide.
The Angel
The tenth intelligence is of singular importance: also called the agent intellect or the angel, it is associated with Gabriel in the Koran, it is located from the beginning in which his emanation broke into multiple pieces. Indeed, from the contemplation of the same angel, as an emanation of the ninth intelligence, it does not result from a heavenly soul, but from human souls. While the angels of magnificence are mindless, human souls have a sensual, sensitive imagination, giving them the power to move material bodies.
For Avicenna, the human intellect is not forged by the abstraction of forms and ideas. The human, even so, is the intelligent power, but only the illumination of the angel gives them the power to pass from knowledge to the power of knowledge in action or action.[citation needed] Even so, the strength with which the angel illuminates the human intellect varies:
- The prophets were flooded with enlightenment to the extent that they radiated not only the rational intellect, but also the imagination, relaying to other humans this superabundance;
- Others receive enlightenment, albeit less than prophets, write, teach, legislate, thus participating in redistribution to others;
- Others receive enough for their own perfection;
- And others receive so little, they never come into action.
According to this view, humanity shares a single intellect, that is, a collective consciousness. The final stage of human life is, then, the union with the angelic emanation. Therefore, the immortal soul woman to all who have made a habit of the perception of angelic illumination, the capacity for superexistence, that is, the immortality.[citation needed]
For the Neoplatonists, of which Avicenna is a part, the immortality of the soul is a consequence of its nature, and not an end.
Acknowledgments
- The Avicena Prize is a prestigious award that the Unesco awards to the people who distinguish themselves in the ethics of scientific work.
- In the book The doctor (The Physician) by Noah Gordon narrates the illusion of a young Englishman, a learner of medicine, for learning from the great teacher of his time. Also the novel Avicena or the Isfahan route by Gilbert Sinoué narrates from a human perspective the biography of Avicena with his passions and wisdom.
- In Tajikistan the peak Lenin was renamed Avicena peak in his honor. '
- Moon crater Avicena received this name in his honor.
- The asteroid (2755) Avicena also commemorates its name.
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