Medicine and Philosophy
Medicine and Philosophy
by Peter Adamson
A striking fact about the history of philosophy in the Islamic world is that so many of its protagonists were also doctors, or at least wrote on medical topics.
The most influential philosopher in the entire tradition, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), was also among the most influential medical authors, thanks to his Canon, which was valued by generations of readers for its comprehensiveness and organisational clarity. A somewhat earlier doctor-philosopher was Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. Both Avicenna and al-Rāzī were avidly read in Latin translation as well as by later doctors in the Islamic world. And both of them, especially al-Rāzī, were active as physicians, as we can see from their first-hand reports of medical experience. The three best-known Muslim philosophers aside from Avicenna are probably al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, and Averroes, all of whom also wrote on medicine. Jewish philosophers working in the Islamic world were frequently doctors, too, including the greatest of them, Maimonides. For many philosophers, work as a doctor meant gainful employment, or advantageous placement within the courts of kings and warlords. Medicine was, in short, the most common way for philosophers to make themselves useful. Despite this, few attempts have been made to explore the interrelation of philosophy and medicine in Islam. It is as though we expect these historical figures to obey the disciplinary boundaries we take for granted today, ensuring that their medical interests did not (to use a medical metaphor) infect their philosophy, and vice versa. Yet, this was clearly not the case. In what follows, I will lay out just some of the ways that the two disciplines interacted, and give illustrative examples for each sort of interaction...
Left: 13th-century manuscript from Animals and their uses/ Kitab na’t al-hayawan wamanafi’ihi showing Aristotle and Alexander the Great.
One reason for the dual competence of philosopher-doctors is that medicine and philosophy entered the Islamic world as part of a single translation movement under the reign of the ʿAbbāsids. At this time a large number of Greek scientific works were rendered into Arabic (often by way of Syriac). Works from a wide range of disciplines, from mathematics and astronomy to agriculture and household management, were made accessible. But medicine and philosophy provided two of the main bodies of translated literature. As a result, authors who saw themselves as heirs of the Hellenic heritage tended to take an interest in both subjects. This does not mean that the interest was always equally apportioned, as we can see when looking at two of the earliest figures in the tradition, al-Kindī and al-Rāzī. Al-Kindī’s works were mostly on philosophical topics, with occasional forays into medicine. The disparity is especially striking in the surviving corpus, which includes plenty of philosophy but only a few rather varied pieces on medical topics (two works on pharmacology, one on coitus, and an attempt to apply astrology to medical diagnosis). But this is no mere accident of transmission. Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist lists 249 titles for al-Kindī, of which only 22 appear under the heading ‘medical works’ – a tidy sum but still less than 10 percent of his total output. By contrast, al-Rāzī was fundamentally a doctor, and his medical contributions dwarfed his writings in philosophy. Again, the relative weight of the two disciplines in his thought has become even more unequal through the vagaries of later transmission, since his philosophical works are mostly lost whereas his medicine is voluminously extant.
Right:
Three physicians in conversation from a 13th-century miniature from a translation of Dioscordies's "De Materia Medica"
The most eloquent demonstration of the intimate relation between philosophy and medicine in the Islamic world is the existence of single texts that deal with both disciplines. There are several early examples, such as the Paradise of Wisdom compiled by ʿAlī ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī in the ninth century. This has sections on standard Aristotelian topics like the four element theory, action and being-acted-upon, and matter and form, as well as more specific questions like the spatial limitation of the cosmos. These are discussed alongside a wide range of medical lore. There are other examples of collections which draw together philosophical and medical literature, such as a ‘Philosophy Reader’ from the eleventh century, recently studied by Wakelnig. These texts show that medicine could simply slot into an otherwise unfilled gap in natural philosophy. When one has, following Aristotle, already explained the cosmos, the atmosphere, plants and animals, one can turn to Galen and other medical authorities for information on the human body. Al-Fārābī’s On the Principles of the Beliefs of the Inhabitants of the Virtuous City adopts the same strategy, moving through the different parts of the cosmos and providing a primer on human anatomy in the appropriate place. Again, this way of using medicine in a broadly philosophical context was already known in antiquity. Nemesius’ On the Nature of Man is one example, powerfully influential through its translation into many languages including Arabic...
Left:
Two people in a physician’s surgery. From Ibn Buṭlān’s Physicians’ Dinner Party. The manuscript is from 13th century Iraq or Syria.
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"Medicine and Philosophy" by Peter Adamson
~ Chapter Eighteen, Pages 168-175 ~
~ Chapter Eighteen, Pages 168-175 ~
1001 Cures Book tells the fascinating story of how generations of physicians from different countries and creeds created a medical tradition admired by friend and foe. It influences the fates and fortunes of countless human beings, both East and West.