"When knowledge reaches the specific natures and what is accidental to them, inquiry stops and is not followed by the fleeting knowledge of individuals to which our souls are not at all inclined." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "The Physics of The Healing", cca. 1014)
"a [thing’s] likeness often appears and seems to those who perceive it as if the image itself were speaking, as if they heard the words that they held and read." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Liber de Anima", cca. 1014-1027)
"It seems that all perception is but the grasping of the form of the perceived object in some manner. If, then, it is a perception of some material object, it consists in an apprehension of its form by abstracting it from matter in some way. But the kinds of abstraction are different and their degrees various. This is because, owing to matter, the material form is subject to certain states and conditions which do not belong to [the form] by itself insofar as it is this form. So sometimes the abstraction from matter is effected with all or some of these attachments, and sometimes it is complete in that the concept is abstracted from matter and from the accidents it possesses on account of the matter."(Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Liber De anima", cca. 1014-1027)
"The animal faculties assist the rational soul in various ways, one of them being that sense-perception brings to it particulars, from which four things result in [the rational soul]: One of them is that the mind extracts single universals from the particulars, by abstracting their concepts from matter and the appendages of matter and its accidents, by considering what is common in it and what different, and what in its existence is essential and what accidental. From this the principles of conceptualization come about [in] the soul: and this with the help of its employing imagination and estimation." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Liber De Anima", cca. 1014-1027)
"When the intellectual faculty considers the particulars which are [stored] in imagination and the light of the above-mentioned active intellect shines upon them in us, then the [particulars] are transformed into something abstracted from matter and from the [material] attachments and get imprinted in the rational soul, but not in the sense that the particulars themselves are transferred from imagination to our intellect, nor in the sense that the concept buried in [material] attachments - which in itself and with regard to its essence is abstract - produces a copy of itself, but in the sense that looking at the particulars disposes the soul for something abstracted to flow upon it from the active intellect. (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Liber De Anima", cca. 1014-1027)
"Sometimes a thing is perceived [via sense-perception] when it is observed; then it is imagined, when it is absent [in reality] through the representation of its form inside, Sense-perception grasps [the concept] insofar as it is buried in these accidents that cling to it because of the matter out of which it is made without abstracting it from [matter], and it grasps it only by means of a connection through position [ that exists] between its perception and its matter. It is for this reason that the form of [the thing] is not represented in the external sense when [sensation] ceases. As to the internal [faculty of] imagination, it imagines [the concept] together with these accidents, without being able to entirely abstract it from them. Still, [imagination] abstracts it from the afore-mentioned connection [through position] on which sense-perception depends, so that [imagination] represents the form [of the thing] despite the absence of the form's [outside] carrier." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Pointer and Reminders", cca. 1030)
"The multiplicity of the soul's occupations with sense-perceptible imaginable forms and connotational images, which are in the form-bearing and the remembering [faculties respectively], with the help of the estimative and cogitative faculty, makes the soul obtain a disposition for the reception of abstractions of them [i.e., of the imaginable forms and images] from the separate substance through some kind of relationship between the two. Observation and inspection of the issue verify this. These occupations [with imaginable forms and images] are those which give [the soul] a perfect disposition that is specific for [the reception of] each individual form, though an intellectual concept may [also] provide this specific [disposition] for [the reception of] another intellectual concept." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina], "Pointer and Reminders", cca. 1030)
"Absence of understanding does not warrant absence of existence." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Cultivate the self with learning in order to progress and leave all else; for knowledge is an abode of all things.
The self is like glass, the knowledge, like a lamp, and the wisdom of God, like oil.
When your self is illuminated - you are alive, and when there is darkness - you are dead." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Further, this power which conceives these ideas does at times gain from sense forms mental, imaginative, and innate in (instinctive to) itself; and in such a case it does this in that it lays before itself the forms that are in the conceiving power and in the remembering (preserving) power, by employing the imaginative and the conjecturing power, and then contemplates them, and finds them to have participated in some forms and to have differed in some other forms; and finds some amongst the forms that are in these powers to be essential and others to be accidental." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"It is evident that everything which does not exist at first and then exists, is determined by something other than itself." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Medicine deals with the states of health and disease in the human body. It is a truism of philosophy that a complete knowledge of a thing can only be obtained by elucidating its causes and antecedents, provided, of course, such causes exist. In medicine it is, therefore, necessary that causes of both health and disease should be determined." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"Pain is a sensation produced by something contrary to the course of nature and this sensation is set up by one of two circumstances: either a very sudden change of the temperament (or the bad effect of a contrary temperament) or a solution of continuity." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"The different sorts of madness are innumerable." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"The mind (Understanding, Reason) is in fact and deed wholly and solely nothing else than the forms of mentally-grasped things, if these be arrayed in the very mind potentially, and through it they are brought out to effective action; and hence it is said that the mind is in fact and deed at once both understanding and understood. Amongst the properties of the understanding power is this, that it unifies the many and multiplies the one through analysis and synthesis. As to multiplication, it is such as the analysis of one man into essence, body, nourishment-getting, animal, speaking (rational). As to unification of the many, it is such as the composition (synthesis) of this one man out of essence, body, animal, speaking (rational) into one notion which is mankind (human being)."(Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
"The theory of medicine, therefore, presents what is useful in thought, but does not indicate how it is to be applied in practice - the mode of operation of these principles. The theory, when mastered, gives us a certain kind of knowledge. Thus we say, for example, there are three forms of fevers and nine constitutions. The practice of medicine is not the work which the physician carries out, but is that branch of medical knowledge which, when acquired, enables one to form an opinion upon which to base the proper plan of treatment." (Avicenna Latinus [Ibn Sina])
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