Ibn Sīnā—al-Bīrūnī Correspondence—VI
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66207/jis.v3i2.245Keywords:
Ibn Sīnā, al-Bīrūnī, Peripatetic natural philosophy, Islamic scientific tradition, history of physics, criticism of Aristotelian physics, natural elements, schools of thought in Islamic scientific traditionAbstract
This sixth installment of the correspondence between Ibn Sīnā and al-Bīrūnī contains a response to al-Bīrūnī by Abū Saʿīd al-Maʿṣūmī, one of Ibn Sīnā’s most accomplished students. A note at the beginning of this
response suggests that al-Maʿṣūmī had been asked by Ibn Sīnā to respond to al-Bīrūnī, and did as instructed by his teacher but his letter was lost and thus he later had to rewrite the answers from his notes. What has survived is a response to seven of the first set of ten questions posed by al-Bīrūnī (answers to questions 3, 5, and 6 have been lost), and answers to all the eight questions from the second set of questions sent to Ibn Sīnā by al-Bīrūnī. In his letter to Ibn Sīnā, al-Bīrūnī had objected to the position taken by the
Peripatetics on some of the most fundamental aspects of natural philosophy, for he held an independent position on these matters—a position that ultimately challenged many views of Aristotelian physics. al-Maʿṣūmī’s detailed explanation of these questions further elaborates views held by the Paripatetics.
