Books by Tommaso Alpina
Scientia Graeco-Arabica 28, Walter De Gruyter, Berlin-Boston, 2021
This book offers for the first time a comprehensive study of the reception and reworking of the P... more This book offers for the first time a comprehensive study of the reception and reworking of the Peripatetic theory of the soul in the Kitāb al-Nafs (Book of the Soul) by Avicenna (d. 1037). This study seeks to frame Avicenna’s science of the soul (or psychology) by focusing on three key concepts: subject, definition, and activity. The examination of these concepts will disclose the twofold consideration of the soul in Avicenna’s psychology. Besides the ‘general approach’ to the soul of sublunary living beings, which is the formal principle of the body, Avicenna’s psychology also exhibits a ‘specific orientation’ towards the soul in itself, i.e. the human, rational soul that, considered in isolation from the body, is a self-subsistent substance, identical with the theoretical intellect and capable of surviving severance from the body. These two investigations demonstrate the coexistence in Avicenna’s psychology of a more specific and less physical science (psychologia specialis) within a more general and overall physical one (psychologia generalis).
English annotated translation of the seventh section, i.e. botany, of Avicenna's Kitāb al-Šifāʾ
English annotated translation of the sixth section, i.e. psychology or scientia de anima, of Avic... more English annotated translation of the sixth section, i.e. psychology or scientia de anima, of Avicenna's Kitāb al-Šifāʾ
Papers by Tommaso Alpina
Early Science and Medicine, 2023
According to Avicenna, the perfect (or complete) disposition (istiʿdād kāmil/tāmm) turns prime ma... more According to Avicenna, the perfect (or complete) disposition (istiʿdād kāmil/tāmm) turns prime matter, which is potentially receptive to every form (or power, or quality), into complected matter, which is endowed with uniform quality. The latter, i.e., complexion (mizāǧ) or complexional form (ṣūra mizāǧiyya), is suitable to receive some particular form (or power, or quality) and not another. The question arises as to how matter acquires its specific complexion. Is it the result of celestial influence, or does it emerge from chemical, elemental interactions within matter? This paper tries to answer this question with textual evidence from Avicenna's natural philosophy and metaphysics. Together with soul/form, complected matter represents the other constituent of organic, living substances. The paper then attempts to determine which science is proper to its investigation. I argue that the investigation of organic matter, that is, the specific complexion characterizing the animal body (or its parts), pertains to zoology. Zoology is crucial to grounding medical practice, which operates on those specific complexions to preserve or restore health.
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (32.2), 137 - 178, 2022
This article analyses Avicenna's Ḥayawān III, 1, which deals with the well-known disagreement bet... more This article analyses Avicenna's Ḥayawān III, 1, which deals with the well-known disagreement between physicians and philosophers on the origination of blood vessels (arteries and veins) and nerves. However, the proposed analysis is not limited to this chapter and its main topic. The more general purpose of this article is to reconstruct the psycho-medical context in which Avicenna's exposition lies, that is, the soul's oneness and the consequent conditions for body ensoulment (i. e. the soul's need for a primary, unitary attachment to the body through the heart and the cardiac pneuma). The article then outlines the strategy through which Avicenna presents medical positions (heart, brain, and liver are all on an equal footing) that challenge his (and Aristotle's) anatomical model, which is coherent with his theory of the soul. In this connection, firstly, the article shows how Avicenna takes physicians' arguments apart in a philosophical context (he usually points at their logical shortcomings). Then, it clarifies the contribution of anatomy to determine the conditions of body ensoulment and, ultimately, how to reconcile medical practice with philosophical truths, if need be.
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 2018
In Avicenna’s Nafs there are two investigations that run in parallel from its very beginning: (a)... more In Avicenna’s Nafs there are two investigations that run in parallel from its very beginning: (a) the investigation of the soul as a relational entity, always considered in connection with the body, and (b) that of the human soul in itself. Both investigations aim at ascertaining the existence and the essence of the soul, in relation to the body, of which it is the soul, and in itself respectively. The aim of this contribution is to reconstruct the phases of these investigations, in order to single out the way in which they are mutually related to each other, and to detect what acts as an indicator of the transition from the first, more general investigation to the second, more specific one. In my reconstruction, this role is assigned to the Flying Man experiment. In order to corroborate this interpretation, passages from three other Avicennian works (Ḥikma mašriqiyya or al-Mašriqiyyūn, Kitāb al-Išārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt, and Risāla Aḍḥawiyya fī l-ma‘ād) are taken into account, since they contain the three other attested formulations of the Flying Man experiment, and an argumentative move similar to the one detectable in the Nafs.
Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere 'La Colombaria', 2018
This article offers a reading of Avicenna's prologue to the "Kitāb al-Nafs", the psychological se... more This article offers a reading of Avicenna's prologue to the "Kitāb al-Nafs", the psychological section of his "Kitāb al-Šifā", together with its English annotated translation.
Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2017
The aim of this article is to outline the textual and editorial vicissitudes of chapters 2-9 of A... more The aim of this article is to outline the textual and editorial vicissitudes of chapters 2-9 of Avicenna’s medical treatise 'On Cardiac Remedies' (Maqāla fī l-adwiya al-qalbiyya) that Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd al‐Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad al‐Ǧūzǧānī (fl. XI c.), Avicenna’s disciple and secretary, inserted between the end of the fourth treatise and the beginning of the fifth treatise of Avicenna’s 'Book of the Soul' (Kitāb al-Nafs). In particular, this article firstly aims at detecting the reason why al-Ǧūzǧānī inserted a selection from Avicenna’s 'On Cardiac Remedies' in this precise place of Avicenna’s Nafs, and the related question of why al-Ǧūzǧānī inserted in this place only an excerpt of this treatise and not all of it. The reason seems to be that of providing the brief outline of Avicenna’s theory of emotions in Nafs, IV, 4 with its medical background. Secondly, it provides a close scrutiny of the Arabic textual tradition of this insertion, which is by no means reflected in the current editions of the Arabic text of Avicenna’s 'Book of the Soul'. Lastly, this article offers an evaluation of the relevance of this insertion and, consequently, of the importance of studying it in relation to the textual tradition of both 'On Cardiac Remedies' and the 'Book of the Soul'.
Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2014
This article aims at providing an interpretation of Avicenna’s theory of human intellection. The ... more This article aims at providing an interpretation of Avicenna’s theory of human intellection. The main problem about this theory concerns the way in which it is presented in two famous chapters of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Nafs (Book of the Soul), that is, chapter II. 2, where Avicenna provides a general account of his theory of abstraction (taǧrīd), and chapter V. 5 where, in order to outline the process leading to the first acquisition of a material form, Avicenna combines the abstractive paradigm with an emanatist model, in which the presence of the Active Intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘‘āl) seems to be crucial. The claim I defend in this article is that abstraction and emanation, far from being incompatible, are Avicenna’s answer to two problems that Aristotle’s account of human intellection has left unsolved, i.e. the epistemological problem concerning the first acquisition of universal forms, and the ontological problem of the place in which they are stored. The cornerstone of Avicenna’s theory of human intellection, which guarantees its fundamental unity, is the Active Intellect to which Avicenna assigns two different, but complementary roles: at the epistemological level, the Active Intellect is the source of intelligibility of any intellectual form in the sublunar realm, since it provides the condition of possibility for the human intellect’s potentiality to conceive intellectual forms; whereas, at the ontological level, the Active Intellect is the collector of intellectual forms, because Avicenna’s denial of intellectual memory requires a depository of the intellectual forms already acquired in order to avoid supposing that a new process of acquisition is initiated for every subsequent recovery of an intellectual form.
Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 2017
Book chapters by Tommaso Alpina
Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation, 2022
Among the writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān or Book of Animals uniquely comb... more Among the writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān or Book of Animals uniquely combines natural philosophy and medicine, a theoretical science and a practical discipline. The resulting method of inquiry is based on direct observation of animals’ bodily features. According to Avicenna’s logical writings, the methodic (or regulated) experience (tajriba) that zoology seems to require consists not of isolated perceptive acts but of repeated observations, producing valid knowledge under certain, stipulated conditions. This method proves extremely fruitful in zoology, especially when direct inspection or analogical reasoning are not viable epistemic approaches to understanding the nature and function of animals’ bodily parts because these are not immediately visible or are insufficiently similar to human bodily parts, the touchstone in comparative anatomy. Tajriba, a term adopted by the Arabic translator of Aristotle’s zoological writings, favors inferences from behavior to anatomy, and consequently to physiology, which allow the inquirer to establish the nature and function of animal parts. This chapter examines such inferences in the case of fish, how methodic experience promotes them, and the role of Greek-to-Arabic translation in elaborating the method of zoology.
Memory and Recollection in the Aristotelian Tradition: Essays on the Reception of Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia, V. Decaix, C. Thomsen Thörnqvist eds., Brepols, 2021
This paper focuses on Avicenna's account of memory, its major problems and its sources. In the ap... more This paper focuses on Avicenna's account of memory, its major problems and its sources. In the appendix, an entire English translation of Nafs, IV, 1 is provided.
Biology and Cosmology in Ancient Philosophy: from Thales to Avicenna, 2021
In metaphysics, Avicenna refers to the heaven as animal (ḥayawān), and to its proximate principle... more In metaphysics, Avicenna refers to the heaven as animal (ḥayawān), and to its proximate principle of motion as soul (nafs), by using the same terminology used in psychology to refer to sublunary animals and their principle. The strategy behind this approach is to account for a remote phenomenon, i.e. heavenly circular motion, through the account of an analogous but closer and thus more knowable phenomenon, i.e. animal locomotion. Thus, in metaphysics a sort of continuity between sublunary and celestial ‘animals’ seems to be posited: both are defined by means of the same terminology and share some distinctive features. However, in psychology, where this terminology is defined, Avicenna explicitly denies that sublunary and celestial ‘animals’ can be referred to in the very same way, except by equivocation. This position rests on the discontinuity between the sublunary and celestial realm that is posited in psychology.
Given that Avicenna’s attitude towards this issue is not consistent, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on the use of the terms animal and soul in psychology and in metaphysics, in order to ascertain whether they have the same meaning when they are applied to celestial and sublunary entities.
Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism, 2020
In the opening lines of the Qānūn fī l-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) Avicenna outlines the epistemolog... more In the opening lines of the Qānūn fī l-ṭibb (Canon of Medicine) Avicenna outlines the epistemological status of medicine: it is a derivative natural science, therefore its philosophical and epistemological underpinnings, that is, the theory and principles of humoral pathology, are given in natural philosophy –the theoretical science to which medicine is said to be subordinated–, and their investigation is declared off-limits to the physician. This statement chimes with what Avicenna says about medicine in his Risāla fī Aqsām al-‘ulūm al-‘aqliyya (Epistle on the Divisions of the Intellectual Sciences).
In providing the theoretical setting of the medical investigation in the first part of the first book of the Qānūn, Avicenna lists the things that the physician must accept on authority, because their existence has been already ascertained elsewhere (i.e. in natural philosophy). Among those things there are the psychic faculties, their existence, their number, and their location. Consequently, in dealing with the diseases related to and affecting the psychic faculties, Avicenna has to assume their ascertainment provided in natural philosophy and, notably, in psychology. Nutrition, and the nutritive soul seem not to escape this paradigm: Avicenna provides a formal account of nutrition in the Kitāb al-nafs (Book of the Soul, i.e. the psychology of the Kitāb al-Šifā’ [Book of the Cure]), and a mechanical account of it in the first book of the Qānūn.
However, is it really indisputable that the mechanical account of nutrition provided in medicine is subordinated to its formal account in natural philosophy? And, more generally, is the treatment of the psychic faculties in the Kitāb al-Nafs the theoretical ground for the medical investigation devoted to them in the Qānūn? A close scrutiny of the text and, in particular, of the passages devoted to nutrition and the nutritive soul, seems to provide a more refined picture: with particular reference to the psychic faculties, medicine seems not to entirely depend on natural philosophy but, rather, to integrate the conclusions of natural philosophy with another theoretical framework, most likely inherited by the previous medical tradition.
Book Reviews by Tommaso Alpina
MIND, 2022
That philosophy and medicine provide complementary forms of knowledge of the same subject is atte... more That philosophy and medicine provide complementary forms of knowledge of the same subject is attested several times, by many authors, in various ways. For example, at the beginning of De sensu et sensibilibus, the first treatise of the collection of writings entitled Parva naturalia, Aristotle says that the investigation of the first principles of health and disease pertains to the natural philosopher (jtsikó 1) since these states concern the living body, which is the subject matter of natural philosophy. Therefore, just as the investigation of most of the natural philosophers results in issues concerning medicine (t a peq i OEatqikg1), that of the physicians who practise their art more philosophically (t À xm OEatq À xm oº jilosojvt¼qv1 t gm t¼xmgm metió mte1) begins with issues concerning nature (Çk t À xm peq i jsev1) (Sens. 1, 436 a17-b1). This brief remark implies that, according to Aristotle, philosophical principles, especially those concerning nature, have to be assumed as points of departure in the art of medicine, whose boundaries are more restricted than those of natural philosophy. A similar consideration is found in the prologue to De anima. There, Aristotle contrasts the universal approach of the natural philosopher to all the activities and affections of the living body with the limited interest in some of them (peq i tim À xm) displayed by craftsmen such as the carpenter or the physician (De an. I, 1, 403 b7-14). This passage contributes to refining the relationship between the natural philosopher and the physician: though sharing the same subject, the former investigates the whole, whereas the latter focuses on some selected parts. Galen of Pergamum, a philosopher no less than a physician, challenges this image of medicine as a practical art subordinate to philosophy. Taking position against the contemporary medical sect of Empiricists, Galen attempts to provide medical practice with a robust theoretical basis concerning the knowledge of the natural world, which can be acquired through a sound logical method (he is also the author of a lost work On Demonstration). In his short but famous treatise That the Best Physician is also a Philosopher, following the model of Hippocrates, Galen argues that the logical method (Ó logik g m¼hodo1), which favours rigorous demonstration over uncritical acceptance, not only provides the physician with the
Conference Presentations by Tommaso Alpina
Programme of the conference "New Issues in Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Middle Ages" ... more Programme of the conference "New Issues in Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Middle Ages" (Pisa, 15-16 December 2022)
Programme of the Conference (Cluj-Napoca, 15-16 November 2022)
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Books by Tommaso Alpina
Papers by Tommaso Alpina
Book chapters by Tommaso Alpina
Given that Avicenna’s attitude towards this issue is not consistent, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on the use of the terms animal and soul in psychology and in metaphysics, in order to ascertain whether they have the same meaning when they are applied to celestial and sublunary entities.
In providing the theoretical setting of the medical investigation in the first part of the first book of the Qānūn, Avicenna lists the things that the physician must accept on authority, because their existence has been already ascertained elsewhere (i.e. in natural philosophy). Among those things there are the psychic faculties, their existence, their number, and their location. Consequently, in dealing with the diseases related to and affecting the psychic faculties, Avicenna has to assume their ascertainment provided in natural philosophy and, notably, in psychology. Nutrition, and the nutritive soul seem not to escape this paradigm: Avicenna provides a formal account of nutrition in the Kitāb al-nafs (Book of the Soul, i.e. the psychology of the Kitāb al-Šifā’ [Book of the Cure]), and a mechanical account of it in the first book of the Qānūn.
However, is it really indisputable that the mechanical account of nutrition provided in medicine is subordinated to its formal account in natural philosophy? And, more generally, is the treatment of the psychic faculties in the Kitāb al-Nafs the theoretical ground for the medical investigation devoted to them in the Qānūn? A close scrutiny of the text and, in particular, of the passages devoted to nutrition and the nutritive soul, seems to provide a more refined picture: with particular reference to the psychic faculties, medicine seems not to entirely depend on natural philosophy but, rather, to integrate the conclusions of natural philosophy with another theoretical framework, most likely inherited by the previous medical tradition.
Book Reviews by Tommaso Alpina
Conference Presentations by Tommaso Alpina
Given that Avicenna’s attitude towards this issue is not consistent, the aim of this paper is to shed some light on the use of the terms animal and soul in psychology and in metaphysics, in order to ascertain whether they have the same meaning when they are applied to celestial and sublunary entities.
In providing the theoretical setting of the medical investigation in the first part of the first book of the Qānūn, Avicenna lists the things that the physician must accept on authority, because their existence has been already ascertained elsewhere (i.e. in natural philosophy). Among those things there are the psychic faculties, their existence, their number, and their location. Consequently, in dealing with the diseases related to and affecting the psychic faculties, Avicenna has to assume their ascertainment provided in natural philosophy and, notably, in psychology. Nutrition, and the nutritive soul seem not to escape this paradigm: Avicenna provides a formal account of nutrition in the Kitāb al-nafs (Book of the Soul, i.e. the psychology of the Kitāb al-Šifā’ [Book of the Cure]), and a mechanical account of it in the first book of the Qānūn.
However, is it really indisputable that the mechanical account of nutrition provided in medicine is subordinated to its formal account in natural philosophy? And, more generally, is the treatment of the psychic faculties in the Kitāb al-Nafs the theoretical ground for the medical investigation devoted to them in the Qānūn? A close scrutiny of the text and, in particular, of the passages devoted to nutrition and the nutritive soul, seems to provide a more refined picture: with particular reference to the psychic faculties, medicine seems not to entirely depend on natural philosophy but, rather, to integrate the conclusions of natural philosophy with another theoretical framework, most likely inherited by the previous medical tradition.
Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa; Scuola Alti Studi – Lucca
The awards ceremony will take place in Florence on November 7.
http://www.colombaria.it/vincitori-premio-a-tesi-di-dottorato-2017/
If having the perceptive faculties and the heart (and the cardiac pneuma inhering in it) is a sufficient condition for sharing in these accidents, they have to be shared by all animals, not only by human beings. However, in Nafs as well as in the Adwiya Qalbiyya Avicenna seems to be hesitant to attribute these accidents to all animals. The aim of this paper is shedding more light on Avicenna’s position concerning the possibility that animals feel emotions by including in the aforementioned dossier of texts Kitāb al-Ḥayawān, XIII, 3 (on the anatomy of the heart), and VIII, 1-4 (on animals’ characters and activities).
Given the epistemological status that Avicenna assigns to medicine, and the primacy that he gives to Aristotle’s philosophical theories, the aim of this paper is to outline the role and use of medical experiments (al-taǧārib al-ṭibbiyya) in Avicenna’s zoology, with a particular focus on his strategy in dealing with those issues in which medical experiments explicitly challenge philosophical theory.
The focus of this paper will be on these two aspects of Avicenna’s zoology, namely its strong connection with psychology and its evident continuity with medicine, by closely scrutinizing Avicenna’s strategy for reconciling natural philosophy and medicine in Ḥayawān, III, 1; IX, 1-3; and XIII, 3, where highly controversial matters are discussed, namely the origins of veins, the male and female role in reproduction, and the anatomy and function of the heart.
27-29 giugno 2018
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa e Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca
Organizzazione: Amos Bertolacci e Tommaso Alpina
DOCUMENTI E STUDI SULLA TRADIZIONE FILOSOFICA MEDIEVALE XXVIII, 2017:
AMOS BERTOLACCI, TOMMASO ALPINA, Introduction — FRANÇOISE HUDRY, La traduction latine de la Logica Avicennae et son auteur — SILVIA DI VINCENZO, Is There a versio vulgata of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ ? On the Hypothesis of a Double Recension of Kitāb al-Madḫal — NICCOLÒ CAMINADA, A Latin Translation ? The Reception of Avicenna in Albert the Great’s De praedicamentis — RICCARDO STROBINO, Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Burhān, II.7 and its Latin Translation by Gundissalinus : Content and Text — GAIA CELLI, The Rhetoric Section of the Kitāb al-Šifāʾ : Hermannus Alemannus’ Latin Translation and the Arabic Witnesses — FRÉDÉRIQUE WOERTHER, Citer/traduire. La traduction arabo-latine de la Rhétorique d’Aristote par Hermann l’Allemand et les citations d’al-Fārābī et Averroès — JULES JANSSENS, The Liber primus naturalium, i.e., the Physics of the Avicenna latinus — ALESSIA ASTESIANO, L’inizio di un movimento nella fisica del continuo : Avicenna lettore di Aristotele (Libro della guarigione, Fisica, III, 6) — CRISTINA CERAMI, The De Caelo et Mundo of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ : An Overview of its Structure, its Goal and its Polemical Background — SILVIA DI DONATO, Les trois traductions latines de la Météorologie d’Avicenne : notes pour l’histoire du texte — ELISA RUBINO, The Commentary of Alfred of Shareshill on the pseudo-Aristotelian De mineralibus — TOMMASO ALPINA, Al‐Ǧūzǧānī Insertion of On Cardiac Remedies in Avicenna’s Book of the Soul : the Latin Translation as a Clue to his Editorial Activity on the Book of the Cure ? — AAFKE VAN OPPENRAAY, Avicenna’s Liber de animalibus (‘Abbreviatio Avicennae’). Preliminaries and State of Affairs — RÜDIGER ARNZEN, Double Translations in the Latin Version of the Metaphysics of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ — ALFONSO QUARTUCCI, Avicenna’s Notion of al-mawḍūʿ al-awwal (‘first subject’) in Ilāhiyyāt, I, 1-2 and its Latin Reception — AMOS BERTOLACCI, The Latin Translation and the Original Version of the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things) of Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Šifāʾ — NICOLA POLLONI, Gundissalinus and Avicenna : Some Remarks on an Intricate Philosophical Connection — IVANA PANZECA, On the Persian Translations of Avicenna’s Ilāhiyyāt — INDICE DEI MANOSCRITTI — INDICE DEI NOMI