Jon McGinnis

Alexander of Aphrodisias on the cosmos

This volume contains the Arabic translations of a lost treatise by Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. AD 200) On the Principles of the Universe with English translation, introduction and commentary. It also includes an Arabic and Syriac glossary. The introduction and commentary deal in detail with the manuscripts, the translators and the exegetical tendencies of the text, as well as with its reception in Arabic philosophy. The main theme of the work is the motion of the heavenly bodies and their influence on the physical world.

A medieval Arabic analysis of motion at an instant : the avicennan sources to the Forma fluens/fluxus formae debate

The forma fluens / fluxus formae debate concerns the question as to whether motion is something distinct from the body in motion, the flow of a distinct form identified with motion ( fluxus formae ), or nothing more than the successive states of the body in motion, the flow of some form found in one of Aristotles ten categories ( forma fluens ). Although Albertus Magnus introduced this debate to the Latin West he drew his inspiration from Avicenna. This study argues that Albertus misclassified Avicennas position, since Albertus could not conceptualize motion at an instant, whereas it is claimed here this was the very position Avicenna adopted. The paper includes an overview of Albertuss discussion and a brief survey of the Avicennan sources upon which Albertus drew. The heart of the paper treats Avicennas analysis of motion at an instant. Avicennas general argument was that since spatial points have no extremities, nothing in principle prevents a moving object from being at a spatial point for more than an instant, understood as a limit. It is then argued that Avicenna had the philosophical machinery to make sense of a limit, albeit not in mathematical terms, but in terms of an Aristotelian potential infinite.

A Small Discovery: Avicenna's Theory of Minima Naturalia

There has been a long-held misconception among historians of philosophy and science that apart from brief comments in Aristotle and Averroes, the theory of minima naturalia had to await Latin Schoolmen for its full articulation. Recently scholars have shown that far from sporadic comments on minima naturalia, Averroes in fact had a fully developed and well-integrated theory of them. In this study, I complement these scholars’ important work by considering Avicenna’s place in the history and development of the doctrine of the minima naturalia. There is no study to date that mentions Avicenna in connection with this doctrine despite the fact that he dedicated an entire chapter to it in his Physics, yet Avicenna’s account is at least as developed as and even better integrated than Averroes’s presentation. The present study situates Avicenna’s position within the more general history of atomism, and introduces Avicenna’s “new argument” for natural minima. The argument is important not only for its novelty but also because it shows how Avicenna integrated Aristotle’s account of minima naturalia into a theory of mixture as well.

Mind the Gap: The Reception of Avicenna’s New Argument against Actually Infinite Space

This book offers a wide range of fresh and original contributions by a distinguished group of scholars. It will be recognized as a major scholarly publication by all those interested in Islamic and Iranian intellectual history and philosophy and those working in the field of comparative philosophy.

Willful Understanding: Avicenna’s Philosophy of Action and Theory of the Will

Abstract: In this study, we look at two interpretive puzzles associated with the thought of Avicenna that are still of intrinsic philosophical interest today. The first concerns to what extent, if at all, Avicenna’s deity can be said to act freely. The second concerns to what extent, if at all, humans within Avicenna’s philosophical system can be said to act freely. It is our contention that only through a careful analysis of Avicenna’s theory of action can one begin to assess his position concerning the status of the will and so provide a satisfactory response to these two interpretative issues. We hope to show that Avicenna can account for divine freedom and that, at least in the case of prophets and sages, humans too are capable of free action.

Pointers, Guides, Founts and Gifts: The Reception of Avicennan Physics in the East

We know precious little about the reception of Avicenna’s natural philosophy in the post-Avicennan Muslim East and even less about the reception of physics more generally in this milieu. In this study, I argue that the primary vehicle for the transmission of Avicenna’s natural philosophy was the Ishārāt. This work is virtually unique in structure and much of its content compared with earlier works of natural philosophy including Avicenna’s own Ṭabīʿīyāt from the Shifāʾ; thus its influence is relatively easy to identify in later works. Additionally, I hypothesize that the physics of the Ishārāt underlies the sections on natural philosophy from some of the most important madrasa textbooks in the post-Classical Islamic world. These textbooks are al-Abharī’s Hidāyat al-ḥikma, Mullā Ṣadrā’s Sharḥ al-Hidāya, al-Kātibī’s Ḥikmat al-ʿayn and Faḍl-i Ḥaqq al-Khayrābādī’s al-Hadīya al-saʿīdiyya.