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Avicenna
Influence in philosophy and science
In 1919–20 British Orientalist and acclaimed authority on Persia Edward G. Browne opined that “Avicenna was a better philosopher than physician, but al-Rāzī [Rhazes] a better physician than philosopher,” a conclusion oft
repeated ever since. But a judgment issued 800 years later begs the question: By what contemporary measure is an appraisal of “better” made? Several points are needed to make the philosophical and scientific views of these men
comprehensible today. Theirs was the culture of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate (750–1258), the final ruling dynasty built on the precepts of the first Muslim community (ummah) in the Islamic world. Thus, their cultural beliefs were
remote from those of the 20th-century West and those of their Hellenistic predecessors. Their worldview was theocentric (centred on God)—rather than anthropocentric (centred on humans), a perspective known to the Greco-
Roman world. Their cosmology was a unity of natural, supernatural, and preternatural realms.

Avicenna’s cosmology centralized God as the Creator—the First Cause, the necessary Being from whom emanated the 10 intelligences and whose immutable essence and existence reigned over those intelligences. The First
Intelligence descended on down to the Active Intelligence, which communicated to humans through its divine light, a symbolic attribute deriving authority from the Qurʾān.

Avicenna’s most important work of philosophy and science is Kitāb al-shifāʾ, which is a four-part encyclopaedia covering logic, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. Since science was equated with wisdom, Avicenna attempted
a broad unified classification of knowledge. For example, in the physics section, nature is discussed in the context of eight principal sciences, including the sciences of general principles, of celestial and terrestrial bodies, and of
primary elements, as well as meteorology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, and psychology (science of the soul). The subordinate sciences, in order of importance, as designated by Avicenna, are medicine; astrology; physiognomy, the
study of the correspondence of psychological characteristics to physical structure; oneiromancy, the art of dream interpretation; talismans, objects with magical power to blend the celestial forces with the forces of particular
worldly bodies, giving rise to extraordinary action on earth; theurgy, the “secrets of prodigies,” whereby the combining of terrestrial forces are made to produce remarkable actions and effects; and alchemy, an arcane art studied by
Avicenna, although he ultimately rejected its transmutationism (the notion that base metals, such as copper and lead, could be transformed into precious metals, such as gold and silver). Mathematics is divided into four principal
sciences: numbers and arithmetic, geometry and geography, astronomy, and music.

Logic was viewed by Avicenna as instrumental to philosophy, an art and a science to be concerned with second-order concepts. While he was generally within the tradition of al-Fārābī and al-Kindī, he more clearly dissociated
himself from the Peripatetic school of Baghdad and utilized concepts of the Platonic and Stoic doctrines more openly and with a more independent mind. More importantly, his theology—the First Cause and the 10 intelligences
—allowed his philosophy, with its devotion to God as Creator and the celestial hierarchy, to be imported easily into medieval European Scholastic thought.

Influence in medicine
Despite a general assessment favouring al-Rāzī’s medical contributions, many physicians historically preferred Avicenna for his organization and clarity. Indeed, his influence over Europe’s great medical schools extended well into
the early modern period. There The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb) became the preeminent source, rather than al-Rāzī’s Kitāb al-ḥāwī (Comprehensive Book).

Avicenna’s penchant for categorizing becomes immediately evident in the Canon, which is divided into five books. The first book contains four treatises, the first of which examines the
An edition of Iranian physician Avicenna's
The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al- four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) in light of Greek physician Galen of Pergamum’s four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile). The first treatise also includes
Tibb). anatomy. The second treatise examines etiology (cause) and symptoms, while the third covers hygiene, health and sickness, and death’s inevitability. The fourth treatise is a therapeutic
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nosology (classification of disease) and a general overview of regimens and dietary treatments. Book II of the Canon is a “Materia Medica,” Book III covers “Head-to-Toe Diseases,”
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Book IV examines “Diseases That Are Not Specific to Certain Organs” (fevers and other systemic and humoral pathologies), and Book V presents “Compound Drugs” (e.g., theriacs,
mithridates, electuaries, and cathartics). Books II and V each offer important compendia of about 760 simple and compound drugs that elaborate upon Galen’s humoral pathology.

Unfortunately, Avicenna’s original clinical records, intended as an appendix to the Canon, were lost, and only an Arabic text has survived in a Roman publication of 1593. Yet, he
Avicenna's recommended spinal
manipulations, 1556 edition, The obviously practiced Greek physician Hippocrates’ treatment of spinal deformities with reduction techniques, an approach that had been refined by Greek physician and surgeon Paul of
Canon of Medicine Aegina. Reduction involved the use of pressure and traction to straighten or otherwise correct bone and joint deformities such as curvature of the spine. The techniques were not used
Illustrations of Muslim physician again until French surgeon Jean-François Calot reintroduced the practice in 1896. Avicenna’s suggestion of wine as a wound dressing was commonly employed in medieval Europe. He
Avicenna's recommended spinal
also described a condition known as “Persian fire” (anthrax), correctly correlated the sweet taste of urine to diabetes, and described the guinea worm.
manipulations, from the 1556 edition of
Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine, a
translation by medieval scholar Gerard of Avicenna’s influence extends into modern medical practice. Evidence-based medicine, for example, is often presented as a wholly contemporary phenomenon driven by the double-blind
Cremona. clinical trial. But, as medical historian Michael McVaugh pointed out, medieval physicians went to great pains to build their practices upon reliable evidence. Here, Avicenna played a
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leading role as a prominent figure within the Greco-Arabic literature that influenced such 13th-century physicians as Arnold of Villanova (c. 1235–1313), Bernard de Gordon (fl.
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1270–1330), and Nicholas of Poland (c. 1235–1316). It was Avicenna’s concept of a proprietas (a consistently effective remedy founded directly upon experience) that permitted the
testing and confirmation of remedies within a context of rational causation. Avicenna, and to a lesser extent Rhazes, gave many prominent medieval healers a framework of medicine as
Illustrations from the 1556 edition of
Iranian physician Avicenna's The Canon an empirical science integral to what McVaugh called “a rational schema of nature.” This should not be assumed to have led medieval physicians to construct a modern nosology or to
of Medicine, a translation by medieval develop modern research protocols. However, it is equally ahistorical to dismiss the contributions of Avicenna, and the Greco-Arabic literature of which he was such a prominent part, to
scholar Gerard of Cremona. Avicenna
the construction of modalities of care that were fundamentally evidence-based.
treated spinal deformities using the
reduction techniques introduced by
Greek physician Hippocrates. Reduction
involved the use of pressure and traction
to correct bone and joint deformities.
The Reynolds Historical Library, Lister Hill
Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Citation Information
Article Title: Avicenna
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 01 January 2020
URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Avicenna
Access Date: July 08, 2020

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