Al-Kindi The first of the great Muslim philosopher was Abu Yakub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (ninth century), usually known as the ’Arabian philosopher’ because of his purely Arab origins. One of the early ’rationalists’ in Islam, he was also a great admirer of Socrates, a Neo-Platonist and a Neo-Pythagorean. In common with most of the Muslim philosophers, he was also active in many other branches of knowledge; he wrote on medicine and astrology, and translated direct from the Greek. He regarded mathematics as the basis not only of scientific investigations but also of philosophical ones. His doctrine of creation differed little from that of Plotinus, from whom he accepted the notion of a. ”First Cause” (as the creative element) and that of a, ”World Soul.” In the fields of logic and of what we would term psychology he proved himself an original thinker. Though his theory about the ways in which the spirit works in man derived partly from Alexander of Aphrodisias, the Aristotelean commentator who was active in Athens at the end of the second centusy A.D., his formulation was both more precise and more elegant than that of his Greek predecessor. Interested as he was in astrology, he naturally believed that the heavenly bodies leave an influence upon human beings, but, because of his Islamic con\ictions, he denied those influences power over the human soul, and limited them solely to the minor role of motivators of purely physical occurrences.
Scientific and Literary Progress under the Abbasids 627
