RBIS October 6, 1999: Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Medieval Uzbek Muslim Medical Doctor and Philosopher

(reprinted from U.S. News & World Report, where it appeared under the title "Jack of All Trades -- Doctor, Philosopher, and Man About Persia, August 23, 1999)

WASHINGTON, Yom Revii (Fourth Day -- "Wednesday"), 26 Tishri, 5760 (October 6, 1999), Root & Branch:

"Ibn Sina was a boastful bachelor with a fondness for drink who wrote some of the most renowned works of medicine and philosophy in the Arab world, a keen mind-for-hire who spent his life traveling across the tumultuous political landscape of 11th-century Central Asia. Known in Europe by his Latin name, Avicenna, he was a Renaissance man when most of Europe was stuck in the Dark Ages -- and he shaped Western thought for centuries to come.

BORN IN 980 [C.E.] NEAR BUKHARA (IN MODERN-DAY UZBEKISTAN), Avicenna began his education early.

"Whe I reached the age of 18", he says in his autobiography, "I had completed the study of all the sciences".

His knowledge put him in demand at the height of the Islamic golden age, when a new breed of strongmen, the sultans, sprang up all over the Middle East. To increase the glory of their courts the sultans funded hospitals and mosques and supported artists, philosophers, and scientists.

Moving from patron to patron, Avicenna wrote more than 100 books. Best known is the "Canon of Medicine", a comprehensive work summarizing the medical knowledge of the day. Translated into Latin around 1150, the "Canon" became the standard medical text of the Middle Ages. By the 16th century, it had been copied by hand countless times; it remained popular into the 17th.

Big Thinker

One of Avicenna's interests was squaring the rational philosophy of the ancient Greeks with the monotheistic faith of Islam.

"He reconciles religious [thinking] with philosophical, Mosaic [law] with Aristotelian, science with faith -- things which were thought to be incompatible", says Vanderbilt philosophy Prof. Lenn E. Goodman.

Western thinkers like Thomas Aquinas turned to Avicenna to explore how faith and reason could coexist. But today, though "his thought is alive", says Goodman, "his method of thinking isn't...There tends to be an assumption that the way of reason doesn't get to the deeper spiritual truth".

Avicenna perished as he lived: on the road. Trying to flee an approaching army while ill, he overmedicated himself with harsh medicines composed of celery seed and opium and died at the age of 58".