3 ms·

Avicenna: The Leading Sage

19 points by diodorus 7y ago

pmoriarty 7y ago
Does anyone have a link to a version of this article that doesn't require javascript to read?
- g82918 7y ago
  Not really, but the article is mostly a very quick summary of a philosopher, > "What this shows, for him, is that the body has nothing to do with what is essential to human beings. If it did, it would be impossible for the flying man to grasp himself, just as it is impossible to grasp the nature of humanity without grasping that humans are essentially living things." is one major quote about his philosophy from the article. Avicenna was much more popular in Arabic countries, and displaced Aristotle there. The article is mostly that this dude should be studied and featured more, but there wasn't much I took away.
ignoramous 7y ago
The Islamic Golden Age saw scholars from Syria, Iraq, Anadlus, and Iran rise to the fore. Many tried to consolidate the Greek-Hellenistic, Neo-Platonic, Aristotlist, Hindu, Nesotarian, Judeo-Christian philosophies as if they were searching for singularity. The foremost book in that regard is authored by an anonymous group from Basra (Iraq) called the Ikhwan-al-Safa [0]. Meta-physics (and philosophy) was considered the highest form of knowledge. And the tradition of pioneering various sciences and philosophy was started in Medina (present-day Saudi Arabia) by a certain Mohammed Baqir and his son Ja'far Sadiq, who at peak is believed to have taught 25,000 people [1]. Jabir Hayyan (Geber, father of Chemistry) was Ja'far's student. Avicenna's ancestors were Ja'far's followers, too. At the peak of rivalry between the Abbasids of Iraq and Fatimids of Egypt (who later invented the Pen), the schools of wisdom and schools of sciences were established by both as a means to compete with each other, politically and religiously, and take over the tradition started by Mohammed Baqir. The Nizaris would later scede from the Fatimids and settle at the Alamut Castle in Iran under the leadership of Hasan Sabah, a student of the Egyptian school of wisdom and the founder of the feared Hash-hasins (Assassins). [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/ [1] https://www.al-islam.org/life-imam-jafar-al-sadiq-baqir-shareef-al-qurashi/his-scientific-university https://www.al-islam.org/life-imam-jafar-al-sadiq-baqir-shar...
BasilAwad 7y ago
In terms of Avicenna's mentioned contingency argument for proof God, one way I think of it is a football analogy. You can’t have a series of backward passes into infinite, which is impossible. There has to be a first cause that doesn’t have a cause. Also good is one of Avicenna’s biggest critics, Al-Ghazali. His view on occasionalism makes it easy to believe in miracles and is sunni orthodoxy in creed. Basically if you believe that God is the creator of causes, effects, and their relationship which is being upheld in every instance, then a suspense of such a relationship is possible. Al-Ghazali, unlike Avicenna, is also considered a heavy weight in sufism. For example, one critique I heard a while back from Neil deGrasse Tyson on Al-Ghazali was that his writings is basically what caused the end of the Islamic Golden age, because the focus became on more on spirituality than intellectual pursuits afterwards. There could be some truth in that. I got my first B in university when I started reading Rumi. This was probably just laziness and not some spiritual opening. Also popular is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. He said something a long the lines that if you hid behind a wall and threw a pebble in front of a baby, even a baby will turn around and see where the pebble came from. There’s a popular story that he was walking on the streets with a large entourage and some old lady asked “who is that guy?” and someone responded “Don’t you know! This is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi! He has 70 proofs of God’s existence!” To which the old lady laughed and responded “If he did not have seventy doubts for the existence of God he would not need seventy proofs!” Upon hearing this al-Razi said everyone should be like the old lady. If you’re interested in islamic theology, Dr. Umar Faruq And-Allah is good. You can find lecture series for his courses on YouTube. This is also a good series by him (http://qadriyya.org/lessons/aqeedah/dr-umar-faruq-abd-allah-video http://qadriyya.org/lessons/aqeedah/dr-umar-faruq-abd-allah-...). It’s a bit advanced as he’s giving the class to a muslim audience. Also good is TJ Winters/Abdal Hakim Murad at Cambridge. I found them both to be honest to the tradition and intellectually honest. For Quran translations, I was told Abdel-Haleem’s is the clearest.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > For example, one critique I heard a while back from Neil deGrasse Tyson on Al-Ghazali was that his writings is basically what caused the end of the Islamic Golden age, because the focus became on more on spirituality than intellectual pursuits afterwards. In my layman's understanding of things, I would say that Al-Ghazli was not so much the "cause" as the final nail in the coffin. "Islamic science" had been twiddling over time for centuries, and Incoherence of the Philosophers was simply what put it to bed. Toby Huff [1] puts forward the thesis that Islam was not really interested in science, and it was simply tolerated by certain rulers. There were no 'universities' as we understand them now, as the madrasas were primarily religious schools (per Huff) and it was all about memorizing and interpreting the Quran. So as time went on (the argument goes), after Islam became the dominant culture in a region, non-religious education institutions tended to dwindle. [2] And this wasn't unique to Islam: Imperial China was also fairly 'non-curious' according to Huff. In ~1600 China was probably more advanced than most/all of Europe, but the Jesuits could not get the Chinese interest in (e.g.) the telescope, and after that point scientific endeavours basically did not occur in China, and neither did technological ones—and so the Europeans were able to walk in a few centuries later. [3] See also Mughal Empire. As one commentator I ran across put it: Islam never had the equivalent of an Aquinas that could reconcile Aristotle with the faith. A merging of Athens and Jerusalem (or Mecca) as some put it. Christianity was able to trudge on because there was no metaphysical conflict (especially when it came to Occasionalism and secondary causation; Aquinas and even Augustine before him rejected Occasionalism [4]), and so Natural Philosophy (aka, Science) was able to develop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff [2] See Huff's The Rise of Early Modern Science. [3] See Huff's Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution. [4] https://www.iep.utm.edu/occasion/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/occasion/
soul4krsna 7y ago
The only sage for the next 10,000 years is AC Bhaktivedanta Srila Prabhupada. The exposition of the cause of all causes has already been explained as the Supreme Person Krsna in Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. Everyone just wants to deny it and ignore the fact that the Vedas is the original instructions for mankind.
gerash 7y ago
Slightly off topic but it seems the "Islamic world" reference to the middle east is overmuch. No one calls the medieval west the "Christian world" as much.
- eschutte2 7y ago
  They do (Christendom).

19 points by diodorus 7y ago

pmoriarty 7y ago

Does anyone have a link to a version of this article that doesn't require javascript to read?

g82918 7y ago
Not really, but the article is mostly a very quick summary of a philosopher, > "What this shows, for him, is that the body has nothing to do with what is essential to human beings. If it did, it would be impossible for the flying man to grasp himself, just as it is impossible to grasp the nature of humanity without grasping that humans are essentially living things." is one major quote about his philosophy from the article. Avicenna was much more popular in Arabic countries, and displaced Aristotle there. The article is mostly that this dude should be studied and featured more, but there wasn't much I took away.

ignoramous 7y ago

The Islamic Golden Age saw scholars from Syria, Iraq, Anadlus, and Iran rise to the fore. Many tried to consolidate the Greek-Hellenistic, Neo-Platonic, Aristotlist, Hindu, Nesotarian, Judeo-Christian philosophies as if they were searching for singularity. The foremost book in that regard is authored by an anonymous group from Basra (Iraq) called the Ikhwan-al-Safa [0]. Meta-physics (and philosophy) was considered the highest form of knowledge. And the tradition of pioneering various sciences and philosophy was started in Medina (present-day Saudi Arabia) by a certain Mohammed Baqir and his son Ja'far Sadiq, who at peak is believed to have taught 25,000 people [1]. Jabir Hayyan (Geber, father of Chemistry) was Ja'far's student. Avicenna's ancestors were Ja'far's followers, too. At the peak of rivalry between the Abbasids of Iraq and Fatimids of Egypt (who later invented the Pen), the schools of wisdom and schools of sciences were established by both as a means to compete with each other, politically and religiously, and take over the tradition started by Mohammed Baqir. The Nizaris would later scede from the Fatimids and settle at the Alamut Castle in Iran under the leadership of Hasan Sabah, a student of the Egyptian school of wisdom and the founder of the feared Hash-hasins (Assassins). [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ikhwan-al-safa/ [1] https://www.al-islam.org/life-imam-jafar-al-sadiq-baqir-shareef-al-qurashi/his-scientific-university https://www.al-islam.org/life-imam-jafar-al-sadiq-baqir-shar...

BasilAwad 7y ago

In terms of Avicenna's mentioned contingency argument for proof God, one way I think of it is a football analogy. You can’t have a series of backward passes into infinite, which is impossible. There has to be a first cause that doesn’t have a cause. Also good is one of Avicenna’s biggest critics, Al-Ghazali. His view on occasionalism makes it easy to believe in miracles and is sunni orthodoxy in creed. Basically if you believe that God is the creator of causes, effects, and their relationship which is being upheld in every instance, then a suspense of such a relationship is possible. Al-Ghazali, unlike Avicenna, is also considered a heavy weight in sufism. For example, one critique I heard a while back from Neil deGrasse Tyson on Al-Ghazali was that his writings is basically what caused the end of the Islamic Golden age, because the focus became on more on spirituality than intellectual pursuits afterwards. There could be some truth in that. I got my first B in university when I started reading Rumi. This was probably just laziness and not some spiritual opening. Also popular is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. He said something a long the lines that if you hid behind a wall and threw a pebble in front of a baby, even a baby will turn around and see where the pebble came from. There’s a popular story that he was walking on the streets with a large entourage and some old lady asked “who is that guy?” and someone responded “Don’t you know! This is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi! He has 70 proofs of God’s existence!” To which the old lady laughed and responded “If he did not have seventy doubts for the existence of God he would not need seventy proofs!” Upon hearing this al-Razi said everyone should be like the old lady. If you’re interested in islamic theology, Dr. Umar Faruq And-Allah is good. You can find lecture series for his courses on YouTube. This is also a good series by him (http://qadriyya.org/lessons/aqeedah/dr-umar-faruq-abd-allah-video http://qadriyya.org/lessons/aqeedah/dr-umar-faruq-abd-allah-...). It’s a bit advanced as he’s giving the class to a muslim audience. Also good is TJ Winters/Abdal Hakim Murad at Cambridge. I found them both to be honest to the tradition and intellectually honest. For Quran translations, I was told Abdel-Haleem’s is the clearest.

throw0101a 7y ago
> For example, one critique I heard a while back from Neil deGrasse Tyson on Al-Ghazali was that his writings is basically what caused the end of the Islamic Golden age, because the focus became on more on spirituality than intellectual pursuits afterwards. In my layman's understanding of things, I would say that Al-Ghazli was not so much the "cause" as the final nail in the coffin. "Islamic science" had been twiddling over time for centuries, and Incoherence of the Philosophers was simply what put it to bed. Toby Huff [1] puts forward the thesis that Islam was not really interested in science, and it was simply tolerated by certain rulers. There were no 'universities' as we understand them now, as the madrasas were primarily religious schools (per Huff) and it was all about memorizing and interpreting the Quran. So as time went on (the argument goes), after Islam became the dominant culture in a region, non-religious education institutions tended to dwindle. [2] And this wasn't unique to Islam: Imperial China was also fairly 'non-curious' according to Huff. In ~1600 China was probably more advanced than most/all of Europe, but the Jesuits could not get the Chinese interest in (e.g.) the telescope, and after that point scientific endeavours basically did not occur in China, and neither did technological ones—and so the Europeans were able to walk in a few centuries later. [3] See also Mughal Empire. As one commentator I ran across put it: Islam never had the equivalent of an Aquinas that could reconcile Aristotle with the faith. A merging of Athens and Jerusalem (or Mecca) as some put it. Christianity was able to trudge on because there was no metaphysical conflict (especially when it came to Occasionalism and secondary causation; Aquinas and even Augustine before him rejected Occasionalism [4]), and so Natural Philosophy (aka, Science) was able to develop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Huff [2] See Huff's The Rise of Early Modern Science. [3] See Huff's Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution. [4] https://www.iep.utm.edu/occasion/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/occasion/

soul4krsna 7y ago

The only sage for the next 10,000 years is AC Bhaktivedanta Srila Prabhupada. The exposition of the cause of all causes has already been explained as the Supreme Person Krsna in Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. Everyone just wants to deny it and ignore the fact that the Vedas is the original instructions for mankind.

gerash 7y ago

Slightly off topic but it seems the "Islamic world" reference to the middle east is overmuch. No one calls the medieval west the "Christian world" as much.

eschutte2 7y ago
They do (Christendom).