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Ibn Sina

Original nameAvicenna

Persian Philosopher and Physician, the Great Synthesizer of Islamic Scholastic Philosophy

Those Who Ground an Idea Into a Whole System · Disciples & School-Builders

Islamic PhilosophyThe Distinction of Existence and EssenceThe Canon of Medicine

Who they are

Ibn Sina (980–1037, Latinized "Avicenna") was a Persian philosopher and physician who reconciled and fused Aristotelian philosophy and Neoplatonic thought with Islamic theology, the great synthesizer of the scholastic philosophy of the Islamic "golden age." In metaphysics he proposed the fundamental distinction of "existence" (wujud) and "essence" (mahiyya) — the "essence" (what a thing is) of anything does not itself necessarily entail its "existence" (whether it exists), and only in the "Necessary Existent" (God) are essence and existence wholly one — a distinction later absorbed and reworked by medieval scholastic philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and made an important theoretical resource for the Western scholastic argument for the existence of God. He was at the same time an outstanding physician, whose work the Canon of Medicine systematically ordered the medical knowledge of ancient Greece, Persia, and India, and for centuries after remained the standard textbook of medical education in the universities of Europe.

Primary sourcesIbn Sina, The Book of Healing, The Canon of Medicine

Key stories

The "Floating Man" Thought Experiment

Ibn Sina proposed a famous thought experiment: "Imagine a man suspended in the air, his senses wholly cut off, seeing and touching no external thing, unable even to feel his own limbs — even so, he can still affirm his own existence." This argument sought to prove that the soul’s self-awareness exists independently of bodily sensory experience, some six hundred years before Descartes’s "I think, therefore I am" — a strikingly prescient thought experiment in the history of the philosophy of mind.

The Spread of the Canon of Medicine in Europe

Ibn Sina’s medical masterwork the Canon of Medicine systematically ordered the then-known knowledge of anatomy, pharmacology, and clinical diagnosis, and after being translated into Latin and brought into Europe in the twelfth century remained a core textbook of European university medical schools, still in wide use into the seventeenth century — its influence spanning nearly six hundred years across the medical history of East and West.

Relationships

Nemesis

📘Ibn Rushd　The two differed importantly in their path of interpreting Aristotelian philosophy

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The Canon of Medicine in European medical educationAfter being translated into Latin in the twelfth century it remained a core textbook of European university medical schools, still in wide use into the seventeenth century.

Appears in

The Middle Ages: The Reconciliation of Reason and FaithThe Islamic Golden Age: Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd Comment on Aristotle The Middle Ages: The Reconciliation of Reason and FaithMaimonides Reconciles Reason and Law, al-Ghazali Criticizes Philosophical Rationalism

⏳ Who lived at the same time as Ibn Sina? →⛪ Scholasticism →🔗 Who taught whom →

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