The Philosophy of Nature of Abu Ali ibn Sina: Analysis of the Concepts of Space, Movement and Time
Jonboboev Sunatullo
A scientific perception of the world in the present independent Tajikistan, and Central Asia in general, is more in demand than ever. Our intellectual heritage, including the views of Al-Biruni, Abu Ali ibn Sina and others, are a source of new inspiration and resource for addressing the many societal issues of post-Soviet communities, including emergence of fundamentalist and radical religious interpretations, depreciation of traditional values, existing poorly developed analytical thinking among youth and others.
The intellectual heritage of our ancestors from Central Asia and Iran has been used during the Reformation and the New Age by the societies and scholars of Western Europe, including Dante Alighieri, Albertus Magnus, W. Ockham, Thomas Aquinas, F. Bacon (inductive logic), G. Galileo, and R. Descartes- (the concept of "flying man"). This intellectual heritage also has been reinterpreted by thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Einstein. The fruitful influence of Muslim culture on the development of modern civilization has long been known and has been studied in such works as G. Sarton’s “Introduction to the History of Science” and Henri Corbin’s “History of Islamic Philosophy.” However, our compatriots today are indifferent toward this intellectual heritage. How we can fill the intellectual and spiritual gap in the minds of today's youths, who are moving towards radicalism? How important is the actualization of the history of sciences and rationalism?
In order to address these concerns and others, we focus our analysis on selected works of Abu Ali ibn Sina concerning the philosophy of nature and issues of motion, time and space. Ibn Sina’s theories generally are comparable to Aristotle’s however, they are original in terms of putting forward new aspects of these theories, including theory of plurality of words, the theory of movement, space and time, the concept of impetus (inertia), the relativity of time and space, the concept of eternity time and God, and the concepts of Dahr, Qadim, and Sarmad.