Summary This paper offers a positive identification of Sahl ibn Bishr's Kitāb al-˒ aḥkām ˓alā ˒n-niṣba al-falakiyya as the Arabic source text for what is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the medieval Perso-Indian style of astrology known as tājika: the sixteen yogas or types of planetary configurations. The dependence of two late sixteenth-century tājika works in Sanskrit – Nīlakaṇṭha's Tājikanīlakaṇṭhī and Gaṇeśa's Tājikabhūṣaṇa – on Sahl, presumably through one or more intermediary texts, is demonstrated by a comparison (...) of the terminology and examples employed; and the Indian reception of Arabic astrology is discussed, including reinterpretations of technical terms occasioned partly by corrupt transmission. (shrink)

SummaryThis paper reassesses the importance of the Benedictine monasteries of St Benoît of Fleury and St Mesmin of Micy (both on the outskirts of Orléans), and the Cathedral of Chartres for the early diffusion of Arabic learning concerning the astrolabe, and it relates this diffusion to that of the judicial astrology of ‘Alchandreus philosophus’ and the astronomical tables of the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei. Evidence is given for the fact that already, by the turn of the millennium, the elements (...) were in place for a corpus of a new, mathematically based, practical science of the stars, consisting of works partly of Arabic and partly of Greek inspiration. This corpus was progressively revised and inspired, in turn, further translations from Arabic, until it reached its most mature form in the mid-twelfth century. Until recently, scholarship has tended to concentrate on the cathedral schools of North-east France and Lotharingia, and the monastic schools of South Germany, and to see Gerbert d'Aurillac, the Archbishop of Reims, as the pivotal figure. While these schools were undoubtedly important in the diffusion of the new science of the stars in the eleventh century, it is argued that a key role in the initial stages of the diffusion was played by the interrelated centres of Fleury, Micy and Chartres at the beginning of the century, and Gerbert may not have contributed as much as has been believed. Additional sections are devoted to the authorities in this corpus, ‘King Ptolemy’ and ‘Alchandreus’. A reworking of the Arabic material on the construction of the astrolabe by Ascelin of Augsburg was copied into this corpus. The text has previously been known from only one manuscript; a new edition, from five manuscripts, is provided here, together with a translation and commentary. (shrink)

Pedro Alfonso y Raimundo de Marsella intentaron justificar la teoría y la práctica de la astrología en medio de un clima de escepticismo y de oposición. Ambos defendieron con firmeza el arte de la adivinación celeste, afirmando que forma parte del plan racional trazado por Dios para el Universo. Atacaron a sus oponentes (los practicantes de la astrología inferior y el clero opuesto a la astrología), llamándolos ciegos, pervertidos y bestias irracionales. Sus discusiones contribuyeron a entender la importancia de la (...) recepción de la ciencia árabe en la Europa latina durante el siglo XII y a que se apelase cada más a la razón. (shrink)

The doctrine of great conjunctions, first theorized by the Arab astrologer Albumasar in the De magnis coniunctionibus, is a form of general astrology characterized...

Critical edition of the earliest known astrological autobiography. The present book reveals the riches of the earliest known astrological autobiography, authored by Henry Bate of Mechelen (1246-after 1310). Exploiting all resources of contemporary astrological science, Bate conducts in his Nativitas a profound self-analysis, revealing the peculiarities of his character and personality at a crucial moment of his life (1280). The result is an extraordinarily detailed and penetrating attempt to decode the fate of one's own life and its idiosyncrasies. The Astrological (...) Autobiography of a Medieval Philosopher offers the first critical edition of Bate's Nativitas. An extensive introduction presents Bate's life and work and sheds new light on the reception and use of Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew texts among scholars in Paris at the end of the 13th century. The book thus provides a major new resource for scholars working on medieval science, autobiography, and notions of personhood and individuality. (shrink)

The formative period of Latin and Hebrew astrology occurred virtually simultaneously in both cultures. In the second quarter of the twelfth century the terminology of the subject was established and the textbooks which became authoritative were written. The responsibility for this lay almost entirely with two scholars: John of Seville for the Latins, and Abraham ibn Ezra for the Jews. It is unlikely to have been by coincidence that the same developments in astrology occurred in these two cultures. (...) John of Seville and Abraham ibn Ezra were both brought up within the Islamic culture of Spain, and their astrology was Arabic astrology. Moreover, some scholars have thought that John’s origins were Jewish, while Ibn Ezra is known to have collaborated with Latin scholars . It cannot be a coincidence that they forged the science of astrology for their respect co-religionists at almost the same time. Yet, very little research has been done on the possible relations between the two scholars. The purpose of this paper is to begin to explore this relationship, and to illustrate it in particular by their shared doctrine concern the location of pain. (shrink)

These volumes provide the Arabic, Latin and English versions of the major text on political astrology of the Middle Ages, generally attributed to Abū Ma‘šar , with a commentary and Latin-Arabic and Arabic-Latin glossaries.

Interrogations and elections were two branches of Arabic judicial astrology made available in Latin translation to readers in western Europe from the twelfth century. Through an analysis of the theory and practice of interrogations and elections, including the writing of the Jewish astrologer Sahl b. Bishr, this essay considers the extent to which judicial astrology was practiced in the medieval west. Consideration is given to historical examples of interrogations and elections mostly from late medieval English manuscripts. These (...) include the work of John Dunstaple , the musician and astrologer who is known have served at the court of John, duke of Bedford. On the basis of the relatively small number of surviving historical horoscopes, it is argued that the practice of interrogations and elections lagged behind the theory. (shrink)

These volumes present the text of Abū Ma’͑šar’s _Great Introduction to Astrology_ in Arabic and Greek and the divergences in the Latin translations. It provides a fully-comprehensive account of traditional astrological doctrine and its philosophical bases.

This paper explores the philosophical aspects of the "Great Introduction" of Abū Ma'šar, one of the great figures of Arabic astrology and an associate of al-Kindī, the great 9th century philosopher. I argue that the following points of philosophical interest may be found in this text: 1. Astrology is described as a "master science" along the lines proposed by Aristotle, i.e. it provides principles for lower sciences. Also he supplies arguments to ground astrology on methodological grounds, (...) such as the use of empirical evidence and testimony. 2. Abū Ma'šar broadly follows al-Kindī's explanation of how the stars influence the sublunary world, by heating the elements. This agrees with al-Kindī's work "On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption," and I identify some parallels between the two works. 3. Finally, Abū Ma'šarr considers whether human freedom is compatible with this causal account. He holds that human actions do fall under the class of the "possible" and not the "necessary," but only because for him the "possible" is what happens sometimes, not always. Thus he seems tacitly to hold that genuine choice is compatible with causal necessitation. (shrink)

The 14th-century plague tractate by Augustine of Trento addresses the matter of plague before the Black Death. The text aims both to predict plague epidemics and to prevent the disease’s spreading. The author attempts to forecasts the outbreak of plague epidemics thanks to the methods of judicial astrology. He also advises hygiene rules and dietary precepts in order to counter the spread of the disease. Moreover, Augustine makes clear that astrological knowledge and techniques serve medical purposes and medical practice (...) can benefit from astrology. In fact, he discusses the topic of medical prognostication and defends the idea that medical practice should not be empirical but guided by astrological principles. The treatise draws on the major astrological and medical sources of Greek and Arab origin and contains references to contemporary masters of medicine. The article updates the author’s biography, examines the manuscript tradition, analyzes the two redactional stages of the text, and provides a new critical edition. (shrink)

Liber de orbe, attributed to Māshā'allāh (d.c.815), a court astrologer of the Abbasid dynasty, was one of the earliest Latin sources of Aristotelian physics. Until recently, its Arabic original could not be identified among Arabic works. Through extensive examination of Arabic manuscripts on exact sciences, I found two manuscripts containing the Arabic text of this Latin work, although neither of them is ascribed to Māshā'allāh: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. or. oct. 273, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania University (...) Library, MS LJS 439. In this paper, I describe these two manuscripts in great detail, so that I confirm their originality of theLiber de orbe, and then by analysing the contents of the Arabic text, I deny the attribution to Māshā'allāh, and identify the title and author asBook on the Configuration of the Orbby Dūnash ibn Tamīm, a disciple of Isaac Israeli (c.855–c.955). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tenth-Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology MAJID FAKIIRY OF PLATO'STHIRTY-SIXDIALOG~Y~Sonly the Timaeus is devoted entirely to cosmological questions. The influence of this dialogue on the development of cosmological ideas in antiquity and the Middle Ages was very great. At a time when the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe had almost vanished, the Timaeus was the only Greek cosmological work to circulate freely in (...) learned circles. The translation and commentary of Chalcidius (c. 350) made the Timaeus available to Latin scholars, at least up to c. 53. But interest in the Timae~s was sustained for a long time before that. The lost commentary of Posidonius of Apamea (d. 51 B.C.), the De animae procreatione in Timeo of Plutarch (d. A.D. 125), the commentary of Proclus (d. 485), extant up to 44d,1 are the most important links in this continuous chain of Platonic cosmological exegesis in antiquity. In the Arabic tradition, the Timaeus had a decisive impact on the development of cosmological ideas also. Plutarch and Proclus were familiar names in the history of Platonic and post-Platonic thought, but I am not aware that the Stoic Posidonius, whom Zeller has described as ".the most universal mind that Greece had seen since the time of Aristotle," 2 was known to the Arabs, or that any mention of his commentary on the Timaeus is to be found in the Arabic sources. General interest in Platonism was an early feature of the philosophical wave which swept the Islamic learned world in the 8th century, and Zeller may be right in saying that it was the Platonic School of Athens which gave Muslim Neoplatonism its peculiar stamp. 3 One of the earliest translators of philosophical texts into Arabic, Yah.ia (b. al-Bit.riq) who flourished in the 2rid half of the 8th century, is credited with the translation of the Timaeus, later retranslated or revised by Hunain (b. Ish~q; d. 873) and Yahia (b. 'Adi and not, as Sarton has it, b. 'Ali; d. 974).~ In addition, the following Platonic dialogues appear to have been translated into Arabic: The Sophistes, the Parmenides, the Cratylus, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and the Crito. The determination of the actual translator of each work poses serious difficulties. In an autobiographical tract, Hunain simply reports that either he or his disciple Is~ (b. Yahia) translated these works for his patron Muhammad (b. Cf. A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plata's Timaeu~ (Oxford, 1928),pp. 34f., and George Sarton, History o] Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1959),I, 428f. Cf. E. Zeller,OutEnesof the History oSGreek Philosophy (N.Y., 1955),p. 268. sIbid., p. 329. ' Cf. al-Fihrist (Cairo, N~D.),p. 358. [15] 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Musa), the astrologer.~ Other writers corroborate or supplement this account. Thus Ibn al-Nadim (d. 997), ascribes to Hunain the interpretation (tarsi'r) of the Republic, to him and to Ibn 'Adi the translation of the Laws, and to his son Ish.iq the translation of the Sophistes, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus2 The Crito appears to have been translated also by Yahia (b. Adi), and extensive excerpts from it and the Phaedo are often quoted in the Arabic sources in connection with the trial and execution of Socrates. Another difficulty is raised by the fact that none of the Arabic versions of these dialogues which have come down to us, either as separate works or parts of general commentaries such as the Laws, the Timaeus and the Republic, are complete, so that the inference is inescapable that, as borne out by Hunain's own testimony, it was Galen's paraphrases or compendia of these works, or at any rate those which were translated into Arabic within the School of Hunain, that are actually referred to in our sources.7 It is not, however, with the general diffusion of Platonism in the Muslim world that I am primarily concerned here, but rather with the impact of Platonic cosmological theory as illustrated in the writings of Abu Bakr Muhammad (b. Zakariya al-Razi; d., c. 932), the Rhases of Latin authors, the greatest... (shrink)

How do the variegated forms of sublunar substances arise in prime matter? Averroes throughout his life believed that “a principle from without” was involved, but changed his mind over its identity. While in an early period of his life he maintained that all forms emanate from the active intellect, he later discarded that metaphysical notion and sought to develop a more naturalistic, astrologically inspired account, which identified the heavenly bodies as the source of sublunar forms. Comparing different versions of Averroean (...) texts, this paper seeks to spell out how, in Averroes' view, the heavenly bodies generate forms in matter. Averroes claims that this is brought about by means of their “heats,” an answer that is however problematic seeing that in the Aristotelian cosmology the celestial realm is quality-less. The paper examines Averroes' ideas on the relationship between light and heat, concluding that the Commentator was unable to integrate the postulate that the heavenly bodies inform matter within his Aristotelian theory of matter. (shrink)

The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity' is an encyclopedic compendium, probably composed in tenth-century Iraq by a society of adepts with Platonic, Pythagorean, and Shi'i tendencies. Its 52 sections ('epistles') are divided into four parts (Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Sciences of the Soul and Intellect, and Theology). The current volume provides an edition, translation, and notes to Epistle 3 ('On Astronomia'), which forms one of the 14 sections on Mathematics. The content is a mixture of elementary astronomy and astrology, (...) but it is not a beginner's textbook. Rather, the purpose is to use examples from those disciplines to provide spiritual, moral, and soteriological guidance. Thus the Epistle uses the argument from design to show the necessity for a Creator who made the harmonious universe; this wondrous design is then employed by the authors as a model, providing humans with a paradigm for proper ethical, political, and even economic conduct; and the study of Astronomia helps the soul achieve ultimate happiness as it seeks to throw off the shackles of this mundane world and oppressive body in favour of the purity of the celestial realm.0Although by no means typical of Islamic astronomical literature, Epistle 3 of the Brethren of Purity gives a window into a fascinating and intriguing group operating during the early period of Islam who sought to continue and adopt one of the esoteric strands of Hellenistic philosophy within an Islamic context, meshing astronomy, astrology, Platonic-Pythagorean philosophy, Quranic and Biblical quotations, and anecdotes from the lives of the Abrahamic prophets. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, (...) natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. The Rasa'il constitutes a paradigmatic legacy in the canonization of philosophy and the sciences in mediaeval Islamic civilization, as well as having shown a permeating influence in Western culture. This is the fifth volume in a series presenting the very first critical edition of the Rasa'il in its original Arabic, complete with the first fully annotated English translation. Epistle 52: On Magic is the last in the corpus, and presents the short version of the 'Epistle on Magic, Incantations, and the Evil Eye'. Within its pages the authors of the epistle argue for the legitimacy of magic and the other occult sciences, and seek confirmation of their views in authorities as diverse as Plato, the Qur'ân, the Torah, the astrologer Abû Ma'shâr, and the mysterious sect of pagan star-worshippers known as the Sabians of Harrân. As in all other volumes of the series, this volume provides the first critical edition of the Arabic text, together with an English translation and a substantial range of notes. An extensive introduction highlights the unique relevance of this treatise within the framework of the Brethren's encyclopaedia itself, and to the history of science in general. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Ezra d'Espagne (m. 1167) fut l'un des plus importants savants ayant contribué à la transmission de la science arabe à l'Occident. Ses ouvrages en astrologie et en astronomie, rédigés en hébreu puis traduits en latin, étaient considéréd comme faisant autorité par de nombreux savants juifs et Chrétiens. Parmi les ouvrages qu'il a traduits de l'arabe en hébreu, certains sont perdus dans leur langue originale et ses propres ouvrages renferment certaines informations concernant des sources anciennes mal ou pas du (...) tout connues par ailleurs. Ibn Ezra semble être le premier a avoir consigne l'une des sept méthodes pour dresser les maisons astrologiques. Cette méthode avait par la suite été utilisée par Lévi ben Gershom (m. 1344) dans le Midi de la France. (shrink)

Al-Kindlidlid's œ;uvre. Two appendixes give respectively details of the manuscripts of the Arabic text and the two Latin translations, and an edition of a specimen chapter from these three versions.

This volume presents the first edition of the Arabic translation, by Hunayn ibn Ishaq, of Galen's Critical Days (De diebus decretoriis), together with the first translation of the text into a modern language. The substantial introduction contextualizes the treatise within the Greek and Arabic traditions. Galen's Critical Days was a founding text of astrological medicine. In febrile illnesses, the critical days are the days on which an especially severe pattern of symptoms, a crisis, was likely to occur. The (...) crisis was thought to expel the disease-producing substances from the body. If its precise timing were known, the physician could prepare the patient so that the crisis would be most beneficial. After identifying the critical days based on empirical data and showing how to use them in therapy, Galen explains the critical days via the moon's influence. In the historical introduction Glen Cooper discusses the translation of the Critical Days in Arabic, and adumbrates its possible significance in the intellectual debates and political rivalries among the 9th-century Baghdad elite. It is argued that Galen originally composed the Critical Days both to confound the Skeptics of his own day and to refute a purely mathematical, rationalist approach to science. These features made the text useful in the rivalries between Baghdad scholars. Al-Kindi (d.c. 866) famously propounded a mathematical approach to science akin to the latter. The scholar-bureaucrat responsible for funding this translation, Muhammad ibn Musa (d. 873), al-Kindi's nemesis, may have found the treatise useful in refuting that approach. The commentary and notes to the facing page translation address issues of translation, as well as important concepts. (shrink)

The _Alchandreana_ are of considerable historical importance. They constitute not only the earliest Latin texts of the Middle Ages dealing systematically with astrology but also the earliest Latin scientific texts based on Arabic sources.

RésuméCet article montre pour la première fois que Maïmonide s'est appuyé de manière significative sur la « Réfutation de l'astrologie » d'Avicenne pour composer sa propre réfutation, la « Lettre sur l'astrologie ». Maïmonide a consulté une copie de la Réfutation d'Avicenne, en utilisant sa structure comme modèle partiel pour sa lettre et en adaptant certains de ses arguments. Par conséquent, on peut dire avec certitude que Maïmonide a lu attentivement au moins une des œuvres d'Avicenne et que sa lettre (...) ne se base pas uniquement sur ses propres œuvres antérieures, le « Commentaire sur la Mishnah », le « Code de la loi juive » et le « Guide des égarés ». (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Humanist History of Mathematics?Regiomontanus's Padua Oration in ContextJames Steven ByrneIn the spring of 1464, the German astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician Johannes Müller (1436–76), known as Regiomontanus (a Latinization of the name of his hometown, Königsberg in Franconia), offered a course of lectures on the Arabic astronomer al-Farghani at the University of Padua. The only one of these to survive is his inaugural oration on the history and (...) utility of the mathematical arts.1 Regiomontanus tells his audience that the purpose of the oration is torelate first the origin of our arts, and among which nations they first began to be cultivated, in what way they were at last translated from various foreign tongues into Latin, which of our ancestors were famed in these disciplines, and to whom in our lifetimes recognition should be granted.2To this end, he offers a history of the quadrivial arts (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) and other important mathematical disciplines from [End Page 41] antiquity to his own time, praises their utility, and exhorts his audience to revive the languishing study of mathematics at Padua. Astrology, a discipline with which Regiomontanus himself was closely associated, is singled out for particular praise.Traditionally, Regiomontanus's Padua oration has been seen through the lens of its rather obvious humanism. In particular, the Padua oration has come to be understood as the rhetorical embodiment of the fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century revival of ancient (Greek) mathematics. Just as this revival is inextricable from the rise of humanism, so Regiomontanus has come to be seen as an exemplar of humanist mathematics.3 It is the aim of this paper to examine the Padua oration in the context both of contemporary humanist rhetoric and of Regiomontanus's own intellectual background in order to argue that, while the oration is stylistically consistent with humanist norms, the vision of mathematics presented in it is also deeply grounded in the university mathematical curriculum and in Regiomontanus's own reading of mathematical texts.Regiomontanus was educated primarily at the University of Vienna (he was also briefly at the University of Leipzig), where he enrolled in 1450, completed his baccalaureate in 1452 and became a master in 1457.4 He remained at Vienna until 1461, when the death of his friend and teacher Georg Peurbach prompted him to travel to Italy with his patron, Cardinal Bessarion.5 In Regiomontanus's day Vienna was probably the most important of the German universities, rivaled only by Prague, whose prestige had declined after it was stripped of its theology faculty in the aftermath of the Hussite Wars.6 The curriculum at the University of Vienna was modeled [End Page 42] after that of Paris, and Parisian scholars played a major role both in its founding in 1365 and in its re-establishment (this time with a theology faculty) in 1384.7Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, the Viennese mathematical curriculum of Regiomontanus's day included all of the traditional authorities taught at Paris in the fourteenth century. For arithmetic and algebra, various "algorisms" (prose or poetry instructions for carrying out arithmetical operations that often also included a small amount of number theory) were the basic texts, supplemented in the fourteenth century by the Quadripartitum numerorum of Jean de Murs. Jordanus de Nemorare's De numeris datis and al-Khwarizmi's Algebra were common sources for those engaged in more advanced studies (i.e., they were not normally the subject of ordinary lectures, but were readily available to interested students, and would perhaps have been the subject of occasional extraordinary lectures). Euclid's Elements, supplemented by the commentaries of Pappus and Campanus, was the central text for geometry, and a number of medieval texts on practical and speculative geometry were in circulation as well. For astronomy, the Sphere of Sacrobosco and the Theorica planetarum were the most commonly used teaching texts, sometimes supplemented by al-Farghani's Elements of Astronomy (the subject of Regiomontanus's Padua lectures). Advanced students could read numerous more specific treatises by Arabic and Latin authors. For optics, the Perspectiva communis of John Peckham was the most common basic text, with texts... (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, (...) natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. Epistles 32 to 36 comprise the first five treatises in the third division of the Rasa'il, on the sciences of the soul and intellect. Combining Islamic revelation with Hellenistic philosophy, the Ikhwan delineate herein their metaphysical system. Epistles 32 and 33 present adaptations of the Pythagorean doctrines, and of Neo-Platonist leitmotifs, whereby a numerical analogy is applied to the unique and transcendent God, or the One, from whom all existence emanates. Epistle 34 takes up the pervasive theme of the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, situating the human being as the central link between the celestial and terrestrial realms. In Epistle 35, we find an explanation of the intellectual faculties of the individual human soul, whose ultimate aim is ascension to the timeless reality of pure intellect. Finally, Epistle 36 presents itself as the astrological epistle par excellence of the Rasa'il; from the coming-to-be of worms, to the emergence of religions and empires, nothing in the sub-lunar sphere escapes the determining influence of the celestial cycles. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Ezra's scientific corpus represented an exceptional case: instead of the common Latin model embodied by the scholar coming from the Christian North to the Iberian Peninsula to initiate a translation enterprise, we have in Ibn Ezra the contrary case of an intellectual imbued with the Arabic culture, who abandons al-Andalus, roams around the Christian countries and delivers in his wandering through Italy, France and England, the scientific and cultural cargo that he amassed during his youth in al-Andalus. (...) The main purpose of this article is to provide a picture of Ibn Ezra's scientific corpus as comprehensive and detailed as possible given the present state of research. The paper will fall into two main parts: Ibn Ezra's scientific work will be broken up into three main genres: Mathematics, Astronomy, Scientific Instruments and Tools; The astrological encyclopaedia; Translations from Arabic into Hebrew. In the second part, Ibn Ezra's scientific corpus will be reassembled as a whole in order to provide a global characterization, trying to point out its general organization and shape, and to indicate its main aims and special traits revealing Ibn Ezra personal contribution. (shrink)

In this book, 11 leading scholars contribute to the understanding of the scientific and philosophical works of Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the most luminous Jewish intellectual since Talmudic times. Deeply learned in mathematics, astronomy, astrology (which he strongly rejected), logic, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and jurisprudence, and himself a practising physician, Maimonides flourished within the high Arabic culture of the 12th century, where he had momentous influence upon subsequent Jewish beliefs and behavior, upon ethical demands, and upon ritual traditions. For (...) him, mastery of the sciences was indispensable in the process of religious fulfilment. (shrink)

This article studies the thought of those Holy Fathers who most vigorously opposed Astrology as the primary source of negative arguments in the medieval Christian debate about the validity of Astrology until the arrival of translations of Arabic astronomical works.

Riassunto: La geomanzia, una disciplina divinatoria importata dal mondo arabo, prosperò nel medioevo latino. Di fronte a tale popolarità traduttori e autori di trattati geomantici, filosofi, teologi e letterati si interrogarono sulla sua validità, sulle sue implicazioni filosofiche e sulla visione del mondo che essa presupponeva. Il presente contributo esamina questo dibattito. In particolare, si ricostruisce lo statuto epistemologico della geomanzia nei suoi rapporti con l’astrologia. Il problema della scientificità della geomanzia viene discusso anche nel contesto dell’azione della causalità celeste (...) sul mondo sublunare. Sono esaminati i ruoli del geomante e dell’interrogante ed è analizzato il concetto di intentio, che rimanda ad un’analisi psicologica peculiare della geomanzia. Caratterizza la geomanzia anche una dimensione rituale fatta di prescrizioni preliminari e di invocazioni da rivolgere alla divinità. Quanto detto impedisce di ridurre la geomanzia ad una semplice tecnica divinatoria; essa appare piuttosto una forma di sapienza rivelata solo al geomante esperto e moralmente degno, che attinge così la conoscenza di eventi futuri e cose nascoste. Da questa breve ricostruzione emerge l’articolata natura della geomanzia, contraddistinta, nella sua originaria versione araba, da una marcata impronta religiosa e da uno stretto, benché ambiguo, nesso con la profezia Islamica.: Geomancy, a divinatory discipline imported from the Arab world, flourished in the Latin Middle Ages. In the attempt to explain the popularity of geomancy, translators and authors of geomantic writings, philosophers, theologians, and other scholars addressed such issues as its validity, its philosophical implications, and the worldview it presupposed. This paper explores this debate, delineating the epistemological status of geomancy in relation to astrology. The problem of the scientificity of geomacy will be discussed with regard to the celestial influences on the sublunary world. In addition, the different roles played by both the geomancer and the consultant are examined. Attention will be paid to the concept of intentio, which implies a psychological analysis peculiar to geomancy. Geomancy is also characterized by ritual elements such as both preliminary prescriptions and invocations of God, meaning that it is not an ordinary divinatory technique, but a form of wisdom revealed only to experienced and upright geomancers, who can thus obtain knowledge of future events and hidden things. From this analysis emerges the complex nature of geomancy, whose original Arabic version had a prominent religious character and a close, albeit ambiguous, link with Islamic prophecy. (shrink)

The Renaissance of scientific thought in twelfth-century Western culture, when alchemy was introduced into the Latin schools, was largely due to the wave of translations, mainly from Arabic into Latin, but also including translations into and from Hebrew, sometimes with vernacular languages as intermediaries. Alchemy, whose tradition had been broken in the West at the end of the Hellenistic age, gained considerable attention—albeit less than astronomy/astrology and medicine—from the twelfth-century translators, who presented Latin culture with a hitherto unknown (...) doctrine that was completely different from any other science. Alchemy, as the Latin Middle Ages received it, is the philosophical search for the agent of material perfection by means of the manipulation of base materials. It thereby united theory and practice in a way unexpected by Latin scholars. In fact, alchemy as a doctrine was inseparable from laboratory practice; and this practice so much resembled well-established craftsmen's labor that for a long period the place of alchemy in the divisio disciplinarum wavered between the mechanical and the liberal arts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34
ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes INDEX TO RUSSELL’S THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY R H Summerfields, The Glade Escrick, York  , .. @.. he edition of the richly allusioned The Impact of Science on Society Tindexed here is that of George Allen and Unwin, published in London in . The pagination of Simon and Schuster’s edition (New York, ) is (...) different and spans pages – instead of the first British edition’s –. The very first edition of the book (New York: Columbia U. P., ) contained two paragraphs comparing Catholicism and Communism that were overlooked for the British and all subsequent editions. Russell regarded them as important, and Sir Stanley Unwin wrote him that they would be incorporated in the next printing. The next printing was not until , and the paragraphs were again overlooked. They belong just before the paragraph on page  beginning “Every fanatical creed” in Chapter , “Science and Values”. These paragraphs are not indexed.—Ed. I meet many people who think that the evils of Communism can be combated by Catholicism. This seems to me a dangerous error. What are the evils of Communism as it has developed? First, adherence to a rigid and static system of doctrine, of which part is doubtful and part demonstrably false. Second, persecution as a means of enforcing orthodoxy. Third, a belief that salvation is only to be found within the Church and that the True Faith must be spread throughout the world, by force if necessary. (These are the beliefs of Communists.) Fourth, that the priesthood, which alone has the right to interpret the Scriptures, has enormous power, physical east of the Iron Curtain and spiritual over the faithful in partibus. Fifth, that this power is used to secure an undue share of wealth for the priesthood at the expense of the rest of the population. Sixth, that bigotry, and the hostility that it engenders, is a potent source of war. Every one of these evils was exhibited by the Catholic Church when it had power and would probably be exhibited again if it recovered the position it had in the Middle Ages. It is therefore irrational to suppose that much would be gained if, in the defeat of Communism, Catholicism were enthroned in its place. (Pp. –) russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34    Abraham  absolute monarchy  Adler, Alfred  adventure, impulse to ,  vs. rashness  aeroplanes  Africa cotton market  North, and Romans  age, average, in West – agriculture effects of  in history of man  integration into larger economy – wasteful of natural resources – see also soil conservation air power and governments  Alexander the Great and superstition  ambassadors, independence of  America see United States anaesthetics  anarchy  Anaxagoras ,  animals, and man  anthropology  apathy  Arab-Israeli conflict – Arabian Nights slaves of lamp in  Arabs and scientific technique  Archimedes , ,  Argentina agriculture  Arians  Aristotle  and causation – movement of heavenly bodies  armed forces and civil authorities  international, as concentration of power ,  perceptions of own/other nations’  in Russia –,  artillery  arts: authors and artists independence of –, –,  ascetic mentality  Asia: population and prosperity  astrology – astronomers Greek  prospects for life on earth  astronomical events indicating disaster  Atlantic Pact  atom bomb , , ,  atomic energy –, ,  Attica, history  Attlee, Clement  Augustine, Saint scientific argument against astrology – Auschwitz  Australia aborigines ,  agriculture  federal government  Austria: war with Prussia  Authority and the Individual (BR)  authority vs. observation –,  autonomy of physical world , – Aztecs and cannibalism  and infanticide  Babylonians and eclipses  Bacon, Francis and witchcraft  bacteriological war  Baltic–White Sea canal  barbarians, and late Roman Empire ,  Barbarossa (Frederick I)  , independence of  Bede, the Venerable on comets  belief(s) on basis of authority, as unscientific – science as determinant  in superstition  uncivilized peoples  benefits of scientific technique – _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34 Index to Impact of Science on Society  Bentham , ,  Bergson, Henri  Bible, false statements in  see also individual books of biological conditions of stability (of society) –, – biology technique(s) from – birth control and population , , – birth rate, low ,  Black Death , – Blimps, Col., Romans as  breeding, scientific – Bright, John  Britain, happiness in  British Empire... 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Adelard of Bath was one of the most colourful personalities of the Middle Ages. He travelled to the Crusader kingdoms, to Sicily and south Italy, and translated texts on astronomy, astrology and magic from Arabic into Latin. He acquired a lasting reputation as a pioneering mathematician, and he was a gifted teacher. He addressed one of these works, on cosmology and the astrolabe, to the future King Henry II, and it is in the context of the education of (...) the nobility that the three works edited in this book are to be viewed. Adelard meant them to be both entertaining and instructive. They deal with all kinds of topics, from the nature of the soul to the cause of earthquakes, from the effects of music to how to train a hawk. A preface provides the results of research on Adelard's life and work. (shrink)

In this article, we report the discovery of a new type of astronomical almanac by Joseph Ibn Waqār (Córdoba, fourteenth century) that begins at second station for each of the planets and may have been intended to serve as a template for planetary positions beginning at any dated second station. For background, we discuss the Ptolemaic tradition of treating stations and retrograde motions as well as two tables in Arabic zijes for the anomalistic cycles of the planets in which (...) the planets stay at first and second stations for a period of time (in contrast to the Ptolemaic tradition). Finally, we consider some medieval astrological texts where stations or retrograde motions are invoked. (shrink)

Necromancy, the practice of conjuring and controlling evil spirits, was a popular pursuit in the courts and cloisters of late medieval and early modern Europe. Books that gave details on how to conduct magical experiments circulated widely. Written pseudonymously under the name of the astrologer and translator Michael Scot, Latin MS 105 from the John Rylands Library, Manchester, is notable for the inclusion, at the beginning of the manuscript, of a corrupted, unreadable text that purports to be the Arabic (...) original. Other recensions of the handbook, which generally travelled under the pseudo-Arabic title of Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon, also stressed the experiments non-Western origins. Using Latin MS 105 as the main case study, this article aims to investigate the extent to which a magic books paratextual data conveyed a sense of authority to its contemporary audience. (shrink)

The question of which areas of the earth are fit for human habitation and which ones are not is dealt with in several Hebrew scientific texts of the twelfth and thirteenth century. Medieval Jewish scholars such as Abraham bar [Hdotu]iyya, Samuel ibn Tibbon, and the three thirteenth-century Hebrew encyclopedists were familiar with theories of the oikoumene and its boundaries through Arabic sources. These Hebrew texts display a variety of views on the earth's habitability, all of which ultimately go back (...) to antiquity. Whereas some texts adopted a division of the inhabited portion of the earth into seven climes, others divided the earth into five zones of temperature, of which two were habitable and three were not owing to extreme temperatures. Some of these Jewish authors also pay attention to the question of how climatological or astrological conditions in a given region influence the mental constitution of its inhabitants. (shrink)

Late antique Alexandria is much better known than the early Islamic city. To be fully appreciated, the transition must be contextualized against the full range of Afro-Eurasiatic commercial and intellectual life. The Alexandrian schools ‘harmonized’ Hippocrates and Galen, Plato and Aristotle. They also catalyzed Christian theology especially during the controversies before and after the Council of Chalcedon (451) that tore the Church apart and set the stage for the emergence of Islam. Alexandrian cultural dissemination down to the seventh century is (...) here studied especially through evidence for the city’s libraries and book trade, together with the impact of its educational curriculum from Iran to Canterbury. After the Arab conquest, Alexandria turned into a frontier city and lost its economic and political role. But it became a city of the mind whose conceptual legacy fertilized not only Greek scholarship at Constantinople, but also Arabic science and philosophy thanks to the eighth- to ninth-century Baghdadi translation movement. Alexandria emanated occult energies too, thanks to the Pharos as variously misunderstood by Arabic writers, or the relics of its Christian saints, not least the Evangelist Mark, surreptitiously translated to Venice in 828-29. Study of the astral sciences too - astronomy but also astrology - was fertilized from Alexandria, as far afield as India and perhaps China as well as Syria, Baghdad and Constantinople. Egypt’s revival by the Fatimids, who founded Cairo in 961, had little impact on Alexandria until about the end of the eleventh century when, for a time, the city attracted Sunni scholars from as far away as Spain or Iran, while commerce benefited from the rise of the Italian merchant republics and the beginning of the Crusades. While the early caliphate had united a vast zone from Afghanistan to the Atlantic, the eleventh century saw a reemergence of late antique distinctions between the Iranian plateau, Syro-Mesopotamia, and the two Mediterranean basins. Alexandria was one of the points where these worlds intersected, though sub-Saharan Africa, to which it formally belonged, remained largely beyond its horizon until the twentieth century. (shrink)

The paper open with an outline of Roger Bacon’s linguistic interests. He claimed that the knowledge of languages is the propedeuctics of any knowledge because it is formulated in the Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic languages, and no translation can fully render the original text. There are also other reasons for which the knowledge of languages is necessary for the functioning of the Church, e.g. in the Liturgy or for missionary purposes. Bacon distinguished three stages of the command of a (...) language, and the second is the skill of translation postulated for each person that studies philosophical and theological texts. This programme was too idealistic and, if only for the scarcity of original texts, it could not be carried out on a broader scale in medieval universities doomed to use Latin translations. And these translations were so negatively evaluated by Roger Bacon. He referred to his knowledge of some details that showed the translators’ incompetence. Then the paper discusses Bacon’s opinions on medieval translators. It indicates Bacon’s chronological mistakes and his lack of information with reference to many facts about the translator’s movements. It provides some possible reasons for Bacon’s ignorance and his harsh evaluation of that movement. There were the following reasons for that: he distanced himself from some learned information due to the fact that Aristotle had for many decades been condemned in Paris, there were excessive expectations in relation to the alleged astronomic and astrological knowledge of Aristotle, and its lack was painful for this scholar. He failed to be aware of the vagueness of Aristotle’s original text due to, among other things, only a rudimentary knowledge of Greek that Roger Bacon had, and Greek original texts were inaccessible. One may also mention a tendency typical of Bacon to trace causes of mistakes and his fear of being rush in creating authorities. Bacon’s testimony concerning William of Moerbeke is discussed in detail. This was done with a view to show that Bacon conveys some information that is not true and some that can be regarded as trustworthy or hypothetical in further research on the life and literary work of this medieval translator. The unique piece of information is that William of Moerbeke decided to revise the ancient translations of Aristotle’s writings. Bacon’s negative opinion about William’s translator’s skills must be treated as unjust, although contemporary research shows that, despite his indisputable accomplishments, William’s translations have some drawbacks. Accordingly, we cannot completely reject Roger Bacon’s testimony. (shrink)

This book collects papers on the greatest philosopher of late antiquity and founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (d. 270), and the founding figure of philosophy in the Islamic world: al-KindÄ« (d. ca. 873). A number of the contributions focus on the text that joins the two: the Theology of Aristotle, in fact an Arabic version of Plotinus' Enneads produced in al-KindÄ«'s translation circle. Adamson argues that this translation is best understood as a reinterpretation of Plotinus designed to appeal to contemporary (...) readers in the culture of the 'AbbÄ sid era. Other papers look at al-KindÄ«'s thought, exploring his ideas concerning metaphysics, free will, astrology, and optics. The traditions of Plotinus and al-KindÄ« are also treated, with papers on Plotinus' student Porphyry and his Arabic reception, and on followers of al-KindÄ«. Adamson argues that we can identify a 'Kindian tradition' in the 9th-10th centuries. He discusses the philosophical presuppositions of this movement, and the use of al-KindÄ«'s ideas made by one representative of the Kindian tradition, the Persian thinker Miskawayh. (shrink)

Marie-Therese d'Alverny devoted a large part of her research to discovering and describing manuscripts of scientific texts, especially those translated from Arabic. This volume contains those of d'Alverny's studies devoted to the Latin transmission of the works of other Greek and Arabic authors (Aristotle, Galen, Priscianus Lydus, al-Kindi, Albumasar, Algazel and Averroes), the authors responsible for this transmission (Scotus Eriugena, Raymond of Marseilles, Petrus Hispanus, Henri Bate of Malines and Pietro d'Abano), and some of the themes of the (...) transmitted texts (astrology and the planetary system of Herclides), as well as three articles summarizing the whole transmission process. (shrink)

Le Tractatus particulares est un ouvrage en quatre parties attribué à Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089-ca. 1161), qui nous est parvenu en deux traductions latines. Le présent article montre que, malgré les attestations dans les incipits et les explicits des deux traductions latines, le Tractatus particulares ne peut pas être un ouvrage authentique d’Ibn Ezra, ni un recueil d’écrits de sa plume. L’essentiel du Tractatus particulares est constitué de traductions de l’arabe en hébreu, réalisées bien après la mort d’Ibn Ezra (...) et associées à son nom par la suite. L’article entend aussi montrer que la source hébraïque du Tractatus particulares était sans doute conçue comme un ouvrage astrologique complet, une sorte d’encyclopédie astrologique médiévale. (shrink)

The article includes a short biography of Hermann of Dalmatia and gives an account of his translations and philosophical and scientific work. In order to have a better understanding of Hermann’s philosophy, a reminder of Greek and Arabic philosophy of nature, on which he relies in his interpretation of the world picture, needs to be presented. Cosmological models by Plato, Aristotle, Eudoxus, Heraclides of Pont, Apollonius of Perga, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and the Arab scientist Abu Ma’shar, are presented. The main (...) focus of interest is on Hermann’s translations. The immense importance of his translations from Greek and Arabic into Latin is due to the fact that some of the seminal Greek and Arabic works became known in Western Europe in the middle of the twelfth century. Hermann is also important as the author of the original work De essentiis, which presented a blend of Platonian and Aristotelian as well as Western European and Arab traditions. (shrink)

Objective:To describe the professional values of the nurse lectures according to 241 nursing students, who participated voluntarily, in three different universities of Bogotá.Methodology:This is a quantitative, descriptive cross-sectional study that applied the Nurses Professional Values Scale—permission secured—Spanish; three dimensions of values were applied: ethics, commitment, and professional knowledge.Ethical consideration:Project had ethical review and approval from an ethics committee and participants were given information sheets to read before they agreed to participate in the project.Findings:It was concluded that nursing students, in general, (...) do perceive these values in their professors, and they give priority to the dimension of ethics, followed by the knowledge dimension, and finally, commitment.Discussion:It is evident that professional values are transmitted by professors and students place importance to such values. Values related to the other’s care are paramount in nursing training in Colombia as well as in other countries.Conclusion:It was found that participating students observed professors directly in relation to values focused on direct patient care, respect for privacy, respect for life, while matters related to professional improvement, participation in unions were not actually analyzed may be due to poor promotion activities and unions during undergraduate studies. The results obtained are primary approach to the study of values related to nursing, a topic which needs to be researched, something vital to all the country offering nursing training programs. (shrink)

This study is defined within the context of the critical posthuman project of decentring humanist subjectivity. We argue that because agential realism, and the agency and performativity that go with it, do not enable non-human matter to be accountable, only human matter, in its intra-active becoming with non-human matter, can support an ethical project. Secondly, we map our understanding of Barad’s agential realism, explaining the importance of agential cuts in phenomena-in-their-becoming that are the world worlding itself, and evaluate ethics, agency, (...) and performativity in this material-discursive framework. Thirdly, understanding the material-discursive to underpin storied matter, we engage it via some clarification of narrative, and narrative agency. We conclude that much organic or inorganic nature as non-human matter is directional and responsive, so alive and generative and, in this sense, capable of worlding itself. However, it does not tell its own stories in the process. (shrink)