Al Farabi and Ibn Shina

Insight into the Categorisation of Science According to Al-Farabi

Al-Farabi (d. 950), Abu Nasr was born in Farab, studied mainly in Baghdad. Being a great expositor of Aristotle's logic, he was called al-Muallim al-Thani (the second teacher), i.e. the second Aristotle.

According to al-Farabi, mathematics is very important in the training of the mind of a young philosopher; it helps him pass from the sensous to the intelligible, and further it informs his mind with exact demonstrations.Similarly, the study of logic as an instrument to distinguish the truth from the false, should precede the study of philosophy proper. Without refined self-culture the chances are that the student would fail to grasp in full, the higher truths as his mind would remain clouded with crude sensibilities.

Al-Farabi in his inventory of the sciences, (Ihsa al-Ulum) gives five categories of the sciences, each with subdivisions:

Language (Ilm-al-Lisan): grammar, the art of writting, the art of reading and prosody.

1. Logic (Ilm-al-Mantiq): describing its components following the Organon of Aristotle and justification for its validity and utility, saying that it “straightens the intellect and leads the individual to the road of Certainty and truth."
2. Mathematics (Ilm-al-Taalim): the science of number (Ilm-al-Adad), geometry (Ilm-al-Handasah), optics (llm-al-Manazir), astronomy (Ilm-al-Nujum), weight (Ilm-al-Athqal), mechanics (Ilm-al-Hiyal), and music (Ilm-al-Musiqa).
3. The natural sciences and metaphysics (Al-Ilm-al-Tabm wa-l-Ilm-al-llahi): mineralogy (Maadin), botany (al-Nabat), zoology (Hayawan), psy-chology (Nafs), and the metaphysical world (Mabad-al-Tabiab), earth and heaven and corruption (al-Kawnwal-l-Fasad).
4. Politics (Ilm-al-Madani), jurisprudence (Fiqh), and theology (Kalam). In political philosophy al-Farabi wrote a famous book titled al-Madinat al-Fadilal, (the ideal city), wherein he explains (like Plato) that the object ofassociation is the happiness of its citizens and the sovereign is to be perfect both, morally and intellectually.

First he explains the law of nature (like Habbes) as one of perpetual struggle of each organizm against the rest; every living thing in the last analysis sees in all the other livings, a means to its own ends is the principle of the law of nature; rather, the law of the jungle as enunciated by Hobbes. Inorder to explain the emergence of human society from this law of the jungle, al-Farabi considers two views: one, more or less like Rousseau's theory of social contract, and the other resembling Nietzche‘s principle of ‘will of power’. Describing the various aspects with regard to the governance of the ideal city, he compares it. Like Herbert Spencer, with ‘hierarchical organism analogous to human body. The sovereign who corresponds to the heart, is sewed by functionaries who, in their turn, are served by others of lower ranks.

   

Ibn-Sina — “Shaikh al-Rais”

Ibn-Sina (Abu Ali d. 1037) or Avicena (a latin distortion from Hebrew-Aven Sina), was an encyclopedist, philosopher, physiologist, physician, mathematician, astronomer and poet. By the Arabs he is called Shaikh al-Rais, i.e. ‘the shaikh or prince of the basned'. Some of the most important of his philosophical views may be summed up under the following two heads: 

1. Logic. Ibn-Sina develops his logical views more or less on the model of Farabi's commentary on the logical organon of Aristotle. We can find his logic mostly in some parts of the philosophical compendium entitled al-Najad and in some important passages in another work called al-Isharat and also in his book Classification of Science (Fi Aqsam al-Ulum al-Aqliyyah). lbn-Sina, following Aristotle, recognises four causesmaterial, formal, efficient and final. He shows that they may all appear together in a definition.For him the sciences are based on experiences and reasoning; they have objects, questions and premises. There are universal premises but in addition each science had its own peculiar promises.
2. Psychology. Ibn-Sina’s psychology gives a carefully systematised account of the various kinds of minds and their faculties. According to Ibn-Sina there are three kinds of minds: (a) the vegetable mind, (b) the animal mind, and (c) the reasonable or the human mind. The human mind alone possesses reason. Reason or intelligence is considered by Ibn-Sina more or less on the Kantian lines, to be of two kinds, namely, the practical reason and theorotical reason wrote some ninety-nine works on philosophy, logic, metaphysics, medicine, geometry, astronomy, theology, and philology. He popuarized the philosophical sciences in his work al-Shifa. Like al-Farabi, lbn-Sina has asecular and philosophical perspective, which is quite evident in his Shia,lsharat, and Danesh-Name.

In Danesh-name, he divides the rational sciences and philosophical perspective (al-Ulum al-aqliyyah), into theoretical and practical sciences: the theoretical sciences aim at attaining the truth and included medicine, astrology, physiognony, dream interpretation, talisman, alchemy, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, music, and metaphysics, the practical sciences at achieving the good for society and compare ethics, economics, and politics. From these two main categories, lbn-Sina arrives at four principal sciences in ascending order; (1) logic (2) physics, (3) mathematics and (4) metaphysics; each science has its subdivisions. He relegates the religious sciences to a minor place in his system and conceives knowledge as consisting of two kinds, a concept (tarawwar) and an attestation of act of judgement (tasdiq) with no reference to its divine origin or its relation to revelation. However, lbn-Sina recognizes that the sciences are interrelated and that all of them receive their principles from the “first philosophy” logic serving as an instrument for all of then.

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