Ibn Sina

Intro

If there is only one God, and the world is God’s creation, then the world must reflect God’s unity: there must be a single, unified cosmos under Divine rule. That has been the central theme of Islamic philosophy for over a millennium and a half, since the religion’s founding. In their insistence on unity, Islamic philosophers laid the groundwork for future attempts to synthesize various strands of world philosophy into a single cohesive framework.

As the Islamic Empire expanded outward from Arabia in the 7^th and 8^th centuries AD, it encountered more and more people with more and more diverse ideas. Like Alexander’s empire a thousand years earlier, the Caliphate became a global center of intellectual activity. Scholars from far-flung lands now belonged under a single, sprawling political system, and consequently they were increasingly able to learn from each other. By the time of the Islamic Golden Age (roughly 800-1300AD), the House of Wisdom at Baghdad had become the world’s preeminent institution of philosophy and science. And arguably the Islamic Empire’s greatest scholar was Ibn Sina, also known by the Latin name Avicenna.

Bio

Though he worked in the Islamic Empire centered in Baghdad, Ibn Sina was born over a thousand miles away in the Persian city of Bukhara (modern-day Uzbekistan). Though the area around Bukhara is mostly desert today, in the 10^th century it was a city of unimaginable wealth. The money came from the city’s strategic location along the Silk Road, and had been accumulating for centuries as the rulers of Bukhara controlled the flow of goods through their city. Under the Islamic Empire, they built great mosques and universities, and by the time Ibn Sina was born it was one of the most important cities in the world.

Growing up in this global center of scholarship, Ibn Sina had plenty of opportunities for education. His family was not particularly wealthy, but his father worked in local government and ensured that his son was properly educated. As a child, Ibn Sina showed a remarkable propensity for learning: we’re told that he memorized the Qur’an at age 10, and by the time he reached his 20s he was a qualified doctor and was well-versed in the classics of Greek and Islamic philosophy.

It was in medicine that Ibn Sina achieved fame. He was a brilliant diagnostician, able to identify the causes of people’s illnesses and prescribe an appropriate remedy. He traveled widely within the eastern reaches of the Islamic Empire, working on his philosophy and earning a comfortable living as a physician until his death in 1037. He wrote a medical encyclopedia called The Canon of Medicine, which summarized all the best medical knowledge of the time. It became a standard textbook in medical schools throughout the world, and was not replaced until the European Enlightenment of the 18^th century, when medical science finally started to move beyond the insights of Ibn Sina.

Following his death, Ibn Sina’s influence was immediately felt in the Islamic world, where he convinced many of his colleagues that they ought to read the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle. In the 13^th century, his ideas were discovered by the German philosopher Thomas Aquinas, who brought Ibn Sina’s Aristotelean monotheism into the Christian world. Thomas wrote some of the most influential works of Medieval Christian philosophy, and is known as one of the two most important Catholic philosophers (alongside Saint Augustine). In his writings are many arguments for the synthesis of Aristotelean philosophy and monotheism, arguments that he learned in part from Ibn Sina. Ibn Sina was therefore one of the most important thinkers in the development of Christian thought, despite the fact that he was himself a Muslim.

Ibn Sina’s Ideas

The Floating Man

Imagine a person floating in the dark silence of outer space. Imagine they are so far out that they can’t see a single star. There is no sound, no smell, no sensation of any kind. If it helps, you can imagine that this person is paralyzed and therefore incapable of any sensations at all. It is as if the outside world simply does not exist. Now imagine that this person has no memories either – they simply woke up in this blank, dark nothingness.

What would such a person think? With no senses, Ibn Sina argues, they would not have any awareness of an outside world. They would not even be aware of their own body! Without any sense of touch, they cannot know that they have arms, legs, or a head. Would they therefore conclude that they don’t exist? Ibn Sina argues that this is impossible. Even a person with no awareness of the world, or of their own body, would still know that they exist in some form.

In other words, whatever else they might doubt, no human mind can doubt its own existence. In making this argument, Ibn Sina anticipated by several centuries the work of Descartes, who today is famous for his statement that “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes made his famous remark in 1644, some 600 years after Ibn Sina’s death, but it’s very similar to Ibn Sina’s argument.

Quotes

I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length.

If that was Ibn Sina’s goal, he certainly achieved it. His interests were broad and his accomplishments spread across many fields. In an era when many people never left their hometown, he traveled to far-flung cities within the empire. (And, to be fair, his life was reasonably long as well – he was about 60 when he died, not bad for someone living in the 10^th century!)

God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change.

This is a standard part of Muslim theology, articulated succinctly by Ibn Sina. It affirms that God is not a physical being occupying any particular place in space and time. Because God is not part of the physical world, God can only be sought through prayer and contemplation, not through science. By the same token, science is independent of the existence of God, and the devoutly religious should understand their faith in light of the best science of the day. Thus, a man like Ibn Sina could be both a prominent scientist and a leading religious scholar, without fear of any contradiction.

In Pop Culture

The Cleric/Healer

In a lot of RPGs and fantasy games, the Cleric plays the role of a divine healer. It’s a common image found in fantasy series like Forgotten Realms, Dragon Age, and The Elder Scrolls. There are deep roots to the idea of the divine healer, which is found in both the Old and New testaments, as well as in shamanic myths and rituals. But there are historical figures who embody the trope as well, notably the great medical innovator and Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina.