World as (Arabic) Text: Mīr Dāmād and the Neopythagoreanization of Philosophy in Safavid Iran

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-431
Author(s):  
Matthew Melvin-Koushki
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Arabic Text ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Mathematical Text ◽  
Western History ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
Primary Mode ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract The heavily Neoplatonic and antiquarian-perennialist tenor of Safavid philosophy is now widely recognized by specialists; but few have acknowledged its equally notable Neopythagorean turn. Likewise, that the primary mode of applied Neoplatonic-Neopythagorean philosophy as a Safavid imperial way of life was occult science has been ignored altogether, making impossible a history of its practice. The case of the Twelver Shiʿi sage-mage Mīr Dāmād – famed down to the present as an occult scientist – is here especially illustrative: for he was largely responsible for this Neopythagoreanization of Safavid philosophy, which saw the remarkable transmogrification of Ibn Sīnā himself into a Neopythagorean-occultist, by his espousal of a peculiarly Mamluk-Timurid-Aqquyunlu brand of philosophical lettrism (ʿilm al-ḥurūf) in at least three of his many works. The example of this imperial Neopythagoreanizing lettrist is thus crucial for understanding the intellectual and religiopolitical continuity of Safavid Shiʿi culture with Sunni precedent, as well as contemporary Persianate and Latinate parallels. Within Western history of science more broadly, Mīr Dāmād and the host of his fellow Muslim kabbalists must now be restored to the master mathesis narrative whereby scientific modernity is but the upshot of early modern Western philosophers’ penchant for reading the world as a mathematical text.

The heavens of the sky and the heavens of the heart: the Ottoman cultural context for the introduction of post-Copernican astronomy

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
AVNER BEN-ZAKEN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Arabic Text ◽  
Copernican System ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Modern Arabic

In 1637 a Frenchman named Noël Duret (Durret) published a book in Paris that referred to the heliocentric Copernican system. In 1660 an Ottoman scholar named Ibrāhīm Efendi al-Zigetvari Tezkireci translated the book into Arabic. For more than three centuries this manuscript was buried in an Ottoman archive in Istanbul until it resurfaced at the beginning of the 1990s. The discovery of the Arabic text has necessitated a re-evaluation of the history of early modern Arabic natural philosophy, one that takes into account the intellectual context of Ibrāhīm Efendi and the overarching trends in the world of Sufi mysticism. These trends were reflected in art, literature, philosophy and natural philosophy. Using philological and cultural clues, as well as Ibrāhīm Efendi's own words, we can attempt deductions about why, how and for what purposes Ibrāhīm Efendi chose Duret's book for his project.

The World of Image in Islamic Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. C. van Lit
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Islamic Philosophy ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Thinking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This book traces the notion of a world of image from its conception until today. This notion is one of the most original innovations in medieval Islamic philosophy, and is unique compared to other parts of the history of philosophy. The notion originated out of discussions on the fate of human beings after death; would this be spiritual only or physical as well? The world of image suggests that there exists a world of non-physical (imagined) bodies, beyond our earthly existence. This world may be entered after death and glimpses of it may already be witnessed during sleep or meditation. Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was the first to suggest something along these lines, arguing that people could simply imagine their afterlife without the need for it to be actually physical. Suhrawardī (d. 1191) included this suggestion in his innovative thinking on epistemology, known as ‘knowledge by presence’, without fully ontologizing it. Shahrazūrī (d. > 1286), finally, turned Suhrawardī’s thinking into the full-blown notion of a world of image. Notably through Taftāzānī (d. 1390) and Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1621), the idea gained wider popularity and continued to be discussed, especially in Shīʿī circles, up to this day. This book gives an insight into late medieval and early modern Islamic philosophy, especially the role of commentary writing. It sets the record straight for the provenance and development of the world of image and reconsiders the importance of Suhrawardī for the development of philosophy in the Islamic world.

Ptolemy's Philosophy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Feke
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
True Path ◽  
Unique System ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
Significant Figures ◽  
Element Theory

The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This book reconstructs Ptolemy's general philosophical system—including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. The book uncovers references to a complex and sophisticated philosophical agenda scattered among Ptolemy's technical studies in the physical and mathematical sciences. It shows how he developed a philosophy that was radical and even subversive, appropriating ideas and turning them against the very philosophers from whom he drew influence. The book reveals how Ptolemy's unique system is at once a critique of prevailing philosophical trends and a conception of the world in which mathematics reigns supreme. The book demonstrates how Ptolemy situated mathematics at the very foundation of all philosophy—theoretical and practical—and advanced the mathematical way of life as the true path to human perfection.

Between Technê and Technology

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Western History ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

In his later work, Heidegger argued that Western history involved a sequence of distinct understandings of being and correspondingly distinct worlds. Dreyfus illustrates several distinct world styles by contrasting Greek, industrial, and technological practices for using equipment. By reading Being and Time in the light of Heidegger’s later concerns with the history of being, Dreyfus shows how Heidegger’s own account of equipment in Being and Time helped set the stage for technology by encouraging an understanding of being that leaves equipment and natural objects open to a technological reorganization of the world into a standing reserve of resources. Seen in the light of the relation of nature and technology revealed by later Heidegger, Being and Time appears in the history of the being of equipment not just as a transition but as the decisive step toward technology.

scholarly journals The sportification of judo: global convergence and evolution

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Sato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Global Convergence ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Olympic Sport

AbstractThis article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.

scholarly journals The Body of Sound: Sounding out the History of Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Schulze
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western History ◽  
Science History ◽  
Hermann Von Helmholtz ◽  
Material Appearance ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropology Of The Senses ◽  
Lower Material

Sound affects and pervades our body in a physical as well as a phenomenological sense: a notion that may sound fairly trivial today. But for a long time in Western history ‘sound’ was no scientific entity. It was looked upon merely as the lower, material appearance of truly higher forces: of more ephemeral, angel-, spirit- or godlike structures – and later of compositional knowledge. To be interested in sound was to be defamed as being unscientific, noncompositional, unmanly. Which steps were taken historically that gradually gave sound the character of a scientific entity? This article moves along recent science history: since the nineteenth century when the physicality of sound and later the corporeality of sonic experiences were first discovered and tentatively described. Exemplary studies from the science history of acoustics, musicology and anthropology of the senses are analysed and restudied – from Hermann von Helmholtz to Michel Serres. Even today, we may ask ourselves: What would an auditorily-founded research be like? Could there be a field of sensory research – via sensing sound?

scholarly journals Pierre Monbeig and the Formation of Geography in Brazil (1925-1957): Geohistory of Knowledge, Intellectual History and the Insertion of Brazilian Geography into the World-Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Alves de Lira
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
World Science ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
The World ◽  
University Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context

This paper aims to present the exemplarity of an intellectual meeting between a French intellectual, trained in history and geography at the Sorbonne, France (before spending time in Spain during the beginning of his doctorate), and the “Brazilian terrain”. From his training to his work as a university professor in Brazil, what I want to characterize is a transnational intellectual context in the domain of the history of science, using geographical reasoning as a reference. However, before becoming aware of these intellectual processes, it should be said that at the base of this context lies the Brazilian space. This kind of reasoning as a proposed methodology is named here the geohistory of knowledge. In this paper, I seek to present this methodology and its theoretical and empirical results, focusing on how the construction of contextualization can be related to space.

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