that had little practical relevance to the real health problems of the medieval Near East â or those of Europe. 34
A loosely analogous problem arose regarding the transmission of Greek astronomical learning via the Arabs to the West. It was essentially the Ptolemaic system that was being transmitted, studied and elaborated upon and the problem with this picture of the universe was that it was predicated upon the assumption that the earth was at the centre of the universe, so that the sun and the rest of the planets circled around it, with the sphere of the fixed stars serving as the universeâs outer shell. This system was set out in the immensely influential
Almagest
of Claudius Ptolemy (
c.
AD 100â178). The Ptolemaic system had the advantage of providing a framework for observations and calculations, even if the system was over-elaborate and based on a false premise. The
Almagest
(which was translated from Arabic by the tireless Gerald of Cremona) was an extremely complex work. Although it did allow one to predict the position of stars from year to year, in fact most medieval students of astronomy (including Dante) preferred to use abridged or simplified versions of Ptolemyâs work written by other hands. Not until the sixteenth century did figures like Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus succeed in thinking their way out of the increasingly unwieldy Ptolemaic model. In the Middle Ages Ptolemyâs astronomy tended to be bundled in with his astrology. 35 Like the writings of Galen and Avicenna, the Ptolemaic treatises gave aspiring scholars something to exercise their minds on, but, at the end of all the mental exercising, not so very much was likely to have been achieved. Translations of scientific works from Arabic, which had begun in the twelfth century, petered out in the early thirteenth century. After the fourteenth century, there were no more such translations. Greek learning, mediated by Arab scholarship, had provided stimulus and misinformation in equal measure.
AVERROES AND THE LATIN AVERROISTS
To return to philosophy, the impact of Averroes on Western scholastic philosophy was in some respects even greater than that of Avicenna. Averroes (the name is a Latinate distortion of the actual Arabname Ibn Rushd) was born in 1126 in Cordova and died in 1198 in Marrakesh. Like Avicenna, Averroes, who was known as the âCommentatorâ, was chiefly valued in the West for his expositions of Aristotleâs philosophy. What was distinctive in his thinking was that he held (or at least was thought to hold) that there was no necessary harmony between faith and reason. He taught that the existence of God could be proved by reason and that the world had always existed and he rejected the immortality of the personal soul. Averroes was translated into Latin in the early thirteenth century by Michael Scot and, from the 1230 s onwards, Averroism was an important and somewhat contentious issue first in Paris and then in Oxford. Averroist Christian philosophers, like Siger of Brabant, believed that Averroes had demonstrated the unity of the intellect shared by all humanity. Also Siger and his partisans argued that, though the Averroist interpretation of the world might not be correct, it was the correct reading of Aristotle. Although Aquinas fiercely opposed Sigerâs interpretation of Averroes, Dante decided retrospectively to smooth over their differences and placed them side by side in the Heaven of the Sun in
Paradiso
, where Aquinas is made to praise Sigerâs logic. Averroesâs writings attracted careless readers and partisans on both sides and, for a while, anybody suspected of any kind of freethinking was likely to be labelled an Averroist. Curiously, despite the denunciations and attempts to ban the teaching of Averroism in the universities, his views were actually more widely known and discussed in Christian Europe than they were in the Islamic world. 36
Despite Averroismâs association
A loosely analogous problem arose regarding the transmission of Greek astronomical learning via the Arabs to the West. It was essentially the Ptolemaic system that was being transmitted, studied and elaborated upon and the problem with this picture of the universe was that it was predicated upon the assumption that the earth was at the centre of the universe, so that the sun and the rest of the planets circled around it, with the sphere of the fixed stars serving as the universeâs outer shell. This system was set out in the immensely influential
Almagest
of Claudius Ptolemy (
c.
AD 100â178). The Ptolemaic system had the advantage of providing a framework for observations and calculations, even if the system was over-elaborate and based on a false premise. The
Almagest
(which was translated from Arabic by the tireless Gerald of Cremona) was an extremely complex work. Although it did allow one to predict the position of stars from year to year, in fact most medieval students of astronomy (including Dante) preferred to use abridged or simplified versions of Ptolemyâs work written by other hands. Not until the sixteenth century did figures like Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus succeed in thinking their way out of the increasingly unwieldy Ptolemaic model. In the Middle Ages Ptolemyâs astronomy tended to be bundled in with his astrology. 35 Like the writings of Galen and Avicenna, the Ptolemaic treatises gave aspiring scholars something to exercise their minds on, but, at the end of all the mental exercising, not so very much was likely to have been achieved. Translations of scientific works from Arabic, which had begun in the twelfth century, petered out in the early thirteenth century. After the fourteenth century, there were no more such translations. Greek learning, mediated by Arab scholarship, had provided stimulus and misinformation in equal measure.
AVERROES AND THE LATIN AVERROISTS
To return to philosophy, the impact of Averroes on Western scholastic philosophy was in some respects even greater than that of Avicenna. Averroes (the name is a Latinate distortion of the actual Arabname Ibn Rushd) was born in 1126 in Cordova and died in 1198 in Marrakesh. Like Avicenna, Averroes, who was known as the âCommentatorâ, was chiefly valued in the West for his expositions of Aristotleâs philosophy. What was distinctive in his thinking was that he held (or at least was thought to hold) that there was no necessary harmony between faith and reason. He taught that the existence of God could be proved by reason and that the world had always existed and he rejected the immortality of the personal soul. Averroes was translated into Latin in the early thirteenth century by Michael Scot and, from the 1230 s onwards, Averroism was an important and somewhat contentious issue first in Paris and then in Oxford. Averroist Christian philosophers, like Siger of Brabant, believed that Averroes had demonstrated the unity of the intellect shared by all humanity. Also Siger and his partisans argued that, though the Averroist interpretation of the world might not be correct, it was the correct reading of Aristotle. Although Aquinas fiercely opposed Sigerâs interpretation of Averroes, Dante decided retrospectively to smooth over their differences and placed them side by side in the Heaven of the Sun in
Paradiso
, where Aquinas is made to praise Sigerâs logic. Averroesâs writings attracted careless readers and partisans on both sides and, for a while, anybody suspected of any kind of freethinking was likely to be labelled an Averroist. Curiously, despite the denunciations and attempts to ban the teaching of Averroism in the universities, his views were actually more widely known and discussed in Christian Europe than they were in the Islamic world. 36
Despite Averroismâs association
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