Avicenna
From Philosopedia
Avicenna (980—1037)
Husain Ibn Abdallah, called Ibn Sina or Sind, was an Arabian physician and philosopher. A sovereign authority in medical science until the days of Harvey, he had a philosophy that was pantheistic in tone, with an attempt at compromise with theology.
Joseph McCabe calls Avicenna the second of the two greatest scholars of the Arab-Persian civilization, the other being Averroës. Unlike Averroës, who is said to have studied far into every night except his wedding night, Avicenna was boisterously sensual and a frequenter of taverns. He wrote not only on medicine but also on theology, philosophy, philology, mathematics, astronomy, geology, physics, and music.
To baffle the fanatics, McCabe states, Avicenna “professed a sort of Pantheism. Tradition ascribed to him the saying that ‘the world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.’ ”
In his 450 or more books, Avicenna included his Islamic philosophy, views that are less pantheistic than metaphysical. For him, God was the first cause of all things. Although he liked the works of Al-Farabi, he built on them to state that there is a single and necessary first cause of all existence. Such a viewpoint is considered controversial, leaving as it does the question of what role is left for God's will - in this sense, he has been considered by some a freethinker within the Islamic fold.
