Abstract

Avicenna on Time is a comparative study between Avicenna's theory of time and that of Aristotle. It focuses on the main issues: Aristotelian temporal theory as the background and Avicennian interpretation and transformation of Aristotelian physical concepts as well as his original contribution to the theory of time. It includes an introduction, the translation of Avicenna's treatise on time in the Physics, Book II, Chapters 10-13 of the Healing, notes on the four chapters and a select bibliography. The introduction deals with two questions: Avicenna's interpretation of Aristotle's definition of time and Avicenna's own theory of time. This latter is analyzed according to four topics: ontology, epistemology, motion and dyamics. Each section of the notes first treats the Aristotelian background and then analyzes the manner in which the Aristotelian physical concepts are transformed by Avicenna. It is in their transformed states that these concepts constituted the background for debate and speculation for a great number of Latin scholastic philosophers. Avicenna's treatment of time is not restricted to one single field, it covers a vast range of fields such as mathematics, logic, physics, metaphysics, epistemology. I have attempted to analyze these within the framework of Avicennian temporal theory. For Avicenna mathematical objects exist in physical things, but they are also posited in the thought of the mathematician, independently of the physical world. His theory of number is related to his ontology. Numbers come into existence by the mathematician's thinking of them, just as being and time come into existence by the metaphysician's thinking of them. In logic Avicenna adds a most elaborate system of propositional logic to the Aristotelian logic of concepts. Propositional logic serves more adequately his purpose since it is more appropriate for analyzing dynamic temporal existence. In physics Avicenna breaks away from the static Greek geometrical methods of analyzing motion and lays down the basis for mathematical physics. In Avicennian physics the Aristotelian qualitative differences are reduced to differences of quantity. The result of this method is Avicenna's theory of intensio et remissio of forms in motion and quantification of force in his dynamics. In Avicenna's metaphysics I have emphasized his claim concerning the priority of unconditional temporal existence. This is an unorthodox interpretation and moves further away from the usual thesis of Avicennian 'essentialism'. In epistemology Avicenna introduces the judgment of cognitional and real existence. I have also discussed his methodology which is multidirectional. Avicenna's metaphysics has already been the object of research undertaken by many scholars but his physics has been insufficiently studied, and no study has been carried out regarding his theory of time