Avicenna 980 – 1037
Avicenna, known in Arabic and Persian as Ibn Sina, was a Persian polymath of the Islamic Golden Age, regarded as one of the most influential philosophers and physicians of the medieval world. His Book of Healing is a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopedia covering logic, natural philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics, while the Canon of Medicine served as the standard medical textbook in both the Islamic world and Latin Europe for centuries. His metaphysics distinguished essence from existence and developed an influential argument for the existence of a Necessary Being. The Floating Man thought experiment, in which a person suspended in empty space without sensory input would still be aware of the existence of the self, became a touchstone of subsequent philosophy of mind. His thought shaped both subsequent Islamic philosophy and the Latin scholastic tradition through translations into Latin in the 12th century.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Persian
- Era
- Medieval
- Movements
- Medieval, Islamic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Avicenna:
“Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored.”
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Attributed to Avicenna:
“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”
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Attributed to Avicenna:
“The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion, and men who have religion and no wit.”
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Attributed to Avicenna:
“I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length.”
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Attributed to Avicenna:
“Whoever has, throughout his life, observed the impressions on his soul made by his loves and hatreds, his desires and aversions, will not doubt that the soul is something other than the body.”