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The Incoherence Of The Philosophers
''The Incoherence of the Philosophers'' (تهافت الفلاسفة ''Tahāfut al-Falāsifaʰ'' in Arabic) is the title of a landmark 11th-century work by the Persian theologian Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazali and a student of the Asharite school of Islamic theology criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy. Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Farabi (Alpharabius) are denounced in this book, as they follow Greek philosophy even when it contradicts Islam. The text was dramatically successful, and marked a milestone in the ascendance of the Asharite school within Islamic philosophy and theological discourse. The book favors faith over philosophy in matters specifically concerning metaphysics or knowledge of the divine. Background In July 1091, at the invitation of Nizam al-Mulk, Al-Ghazali became professor of law at the ''Nizamiyya'' of Baghdad, one of the most prestigious colleges at that time. This college was intend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arabic Language
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston, 2011. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece. Since the 7th century, Arabic has been characterized by diglossia, with an opposition between a standard prestige language—i.e., Literary Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Classical Arabic—and diverse vernacular varieties, which serve as mother tongues. Colloquial dialects vary significantly from MSA, impeding mutual intelligibility. MSA is only acquired through formal education and is not spoken natively. It is the language of literature, official documents, and formal written m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Aims Of The Philosophers
Maqasid al Falasifa (), or The Aims of the Philosophers was written by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazali. Influenced by Avicenna's works, he wrote this book presenting the basic theories of philosophy. In this book, he explained in detail about what philosophy is and described basic entities like judgement, concept, premise and logic. Al-Ghazali stated that one must be well versed in the ideas of the philosophers before setting out to refute their ideas. He also stated that he did not find other branches of philosophy including physics, logic, astronomy or mathematics problematic. After writing ''Maqasid al Falasifa'', he wrote another book Tahāfut al-Falāsifa, criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy. Influence This book was influential in Europe and was one of the first to be translated from Arabic to Latin (12th century). A portion of the book is also translated into Hebrew and English. See also * The Incoherence of the Philosopher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disputation
In the scholastic system of education of the Middle Ages, disputations (in Latin: ''disputationes'', singular: ''disputatio'') offered a formalized method of debate designed to uncover and establish truths in theology and in sciences. Fixed rules governed the process: they demanded dependence on traditional written authorities and the thorough understanding of each argument on each side. Medieval disputations Inter-faith disputations A significant category of disputations took place between Christian and Jewish theologians as a form of both theological and philosophical debate and proselytization. Often, the Christian side was represented by a recent convert from Judaism. The only way for the Jewish side to 'win' was to force a draw by drawing the Christian side into a position in which it was necessary to deny the Old Testament to win, committing heresy. According to Michael J. Cook, "Since 'winning' a debate could well jeopardize the security of the Jewish community at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al-Mawrid
Javed Ahmad Ghamidi ( ur, , translit=Jāvēd Aḥmad Ghāmidī; April 7, 1952) is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and scholar of Islam. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation ''Danish Sara''. He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani Government and the country's Parliament) on 28 January 2006, where he remained for a couple of years. He also taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy for more than a decade from 1979 to 1991. He was also a student of Islamic scholar and exegete, Amin Ahsan Islahi. He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wasatiyyah, on the popular electronic media of Pakistan.Masud(2007) Currently he is Principal Research Fellow and Chief Patron of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning in United States. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi was named in ''The Muslim 500'' (The World's Most Influential Musli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lunar Eclipse
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow. Such alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the full moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth's orbit. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are exactly or very closely aligned (in syzygy) with Earth between the other two, which can happen only on the night of a full moon when the Moon is near either lunar node. The type and length of a lunar eclipse depend on the Moon's proximity to the lunar node. When the moon is totally eclipsed by the Earth, it takes on a reddish color that is caused by the planet when it completely blocks direct sunlight from reaching the Moon surface, as only the light reflected from the lunar surface has been refracted by Earth's atmosphere. This light appears reddish due to the Rayleigh scattering of blue light, the same reason sunrise and sunsets are more orange than during the day. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Eclipse
A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six months, during the new moon phase, when the Moon's orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth's orbit. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured. Unlike a lunar eclipse, which may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth, a solar eclipse can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world. As such, although total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every 18 months on average, they recur at any given place only once every 360 to 410 years. If the Moon were in a perfectly circular orbit and in the same orbital plane as Earth, there would be total solar eclipses once a month, at every new moon. Instead, because the Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematics In Medieval Islam
Mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, was built on Greek mathematics (Euclid, Archimedes, Apollonius) and Indian mathematics ( Aryabhata, Brahmagupta). Important progress was made, such as full development of the decimal place-value system to include decimal fractions, the first systematised study of algebra, and advances in geometry and trigonometry. Arabic works played an important role in the transmission of mathematics to Europe during the 10th—12th centuries. Concepts Algebra The study of algebra, the name of which is derived from the Arabic word meaning completion or "reunion of broken parts", flourished during the Islamic golden age. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was the founder of algebra, is along with the Greek mathematician Diophantus, known as the father of algebra. In his book '' The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Demonstration
A scientific demonstration is a procedure carried out for the purposes of demonstrating scientific principles, rather than for hypothesis testing or knowledge gathering (although they may originally have been carried out for these purposes). Most scientific demonstrations are simple laboratory demonstrations intended to demonstrate physical principles, often in a surprising or entertaining way. They are carried out in schools and universities, and sometimes in public demonstrations in popular science lectures and TV programs aimed at the general public. Many scientific demonstrations are chosen for their combination of educational merit and entertainment value, which is often provided by dramatic phenomena such as explosions. Public scientific demonstrations were a common occurrence in the Age of Enlightenment, and have long been a feature of the British Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, which date back to 1825. In the television era, scientific demonstrations have featured i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific method for additional detail.) It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; the testability of hypotheses, experimental and the measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are ''principles'' of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, the underlying process is frequentl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physical Law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) across all fields of natural science (physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology). Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence. It is generally understood that they implicitly reflect, though they do not explicitly assert, causal relationships fundamental to reality, and are discovered rather than invented. Scientific laws summarize the results of experiments or observations, usually within a certain range of application. In general, the accuracy of a law does not change when a new theory of the relevant phenomenon is worked out, but rather the scope of the law's application, since the mathematics or statement represent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic In Islamic Philosophy
Early Islamic law placed importance on formulating standards of argument, which gave rise to a "novel approach to logic" ( ''manṭiq'' "speech, eloquence") in Kalam (Islamic scholasticism). However, with the rise of the Mu'tazili philosophers, who highly valued Aristotle's ''Organon'', this approach was displaced by the older ideas from Hellenistic philosophy. The works of al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali and other Persian Muslim logicians who often criticized and corrected Aristotelian logic and introduced their own forms of logic, also played a central role in the subsequent development of European logic during the Renaissance. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Important developments made by Muslim logicians included the development of "Avicennian logic" as a replacement of Aristotelian logic. Avicenna's system of logic was responsible for the introduction of hypothetical syllogism, temporal modal logic and inductive logic. Other important developme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Occasionalism
Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God. (A related concept, which has been called "occasional causation", also denies a link of efficient causation between mundane events, but may differ as to the identity of the true cause that replaces them.) The doctrine states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event ''causes'' God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other. Islamic theological schools The doctrine first reached prominence in the Islamic theological schools of Iraq, especially in Basra. The ninth century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari argued that there is no Secondary Causation in the created order. The world is sust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
