Philosophus autodidactus . . .
Johannes Patruus
ostenditur, quomodo ex inferiorum contemplatione ad superiorum notitiam
ratio humana ascendere possit / Ex arabicâ in linguam latinam versa ab
Edvardo Pocockio:
http://books.google.com/books?id=yFAR_G7HM3QC
Of the several English translations, some are on sale at Amazon &c., and
only the Ockley version of 1708 appears to be freely available:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16831/pg16831.html.utf8
http://www.archive.org/details/improvementhuma00ocklgoog
The extent of the influence on western philosophy attributed to this
medieval book by its Wikipedia article is astounding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayy_ibn_Yaqdhan
A case for Sir Melvyn?
Patruus
Ed Cryer
"Johannes Patruus" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:7on18aF...@mid.individual.net...
He's very well known to western philosophy, and very highly regarded.
We call him "Avicenna".
Sir Melvyn knows all about him already;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00855lt
Ed
Johannes Patruus
(a) Ibn Sina = Avicenna
(b) Ibn Tufayl = ebn Tophail, Abentophal, Abentofail, &c.
The author of the Philosophus Autodidactus is (b), and his connection with
Avicenna is mentioned in the linked Wikipedia article.
> Ed
Patruus
jsqu...@gmail.com
I am quite fascinated by this posting because I have
never heard of this "Ibn Tophail" person and I wonder
why. This leads me to two questions:
1. Was Ibn Tophail really as influential as the
Wiki piece says?
2. If the answer to " 1. " above is "Yes", then
why is Ibn Tophail so little known and recognized
so little for his achievments?
3. Was Philosophus Autodidactus a major influence
on Spinoza?
Ed Cryer
<jsqu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6d3630a6-87a1-4946...@u36g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
****************************
I was wondering about the father of modern empiricism; John Locke. He
published his famous "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" in 1689
(although he'd carried it around for years; slow to publish, just like
Newton).
The "tabula rasa" theory won it many laurels. That was ultimately
Aristotle's baby (who, no doubt, got it from Greek predecessors!).
But a Latin translation of Philosophus Autodidactus came out in 1671, by
Edward Pococke the Younger.
Hhhhmmm! Interesting.
Ed
jsqu...@gmail.com
> <jsqua...@gmail.com> wrote in message
Yes, interesting. One has to wonder,
does one not?
.
Ed Cryer
<jsqu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:2a1e4e44-212c-41e8...@u16g2000pru.googlegroups.com...
***************
Wonder, yes, but not submit to hearsay and prejudiced evidence.
I know a teacher of Buddhism who insists that "Plato misunderstood the
Buddha". He claims that Plato got Platonism from the east, misunderstood
it, twisted it into a Greek-style outlook on life!
I showed him accounts by Herodotus et al. about the little degree of
contact between Greece and India before the days of Alexander. His reply
is "Yes, but stories passed on and told around camp-fires on trade
trails!".
Hhhhmmm! Very close to conspiracy theory!
Ed
jsqu...@gmail.com
Is it not a given that everyone misunderstands the Buddha?
I tend to think that there was much more interchange
between Greece and India than is commonly
acknowledged. For the roots of Platonism to be
in the East is highly plausible. For the roots of both
Buddhism and Platonism to lie in some sort of
Indoeuropean "Homeland" is also plausible. Most of all,
for the educated classes in different cultures that
could communicate with each other to arrive at
similar systems of thought is likely.
Suppose that, on average,
one could walk 10 miles per day thru the typical
terrain between Greece and India. How long would
it take to walk from one to the other? More likely,
using established sea routes, how long would it take?
Johannes Patruus
G.A. Russell has a chapter on the impact of the Philosophus Autodidactus
pp.224-265 of this book:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4H2fESItCVIC
Google will let you "preview" some but not all of the pages.
Patruus
Ed Cryer
<jsqu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3da716ac-e5b3-48ab...@f20g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
*******
Gautama and Socrates were contemporaries. But, but, but .......
Beyond that you move outside of science and verifiability; into the
realm of speculation.
Ed
Johannes Patruus
Inadequately versed as I am in the tricks of the trade, I have been able
to snag only 29 pages (not all consecutive) out of the total of 42 before
smacking into the brick wall:
http://www.aliquis.plus.com/NG/russell.pdf
Anyone have more tricks?
Patruus
Ed Cryer
"Johannes Patruus" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
I get the lot here, but embedded in page; which I can then view full
screen. No save locally option, though.
Which PDF link have you used?
Ed
Johannes Patruus
Holy cow - that's totally amazing!
> but embedded in page; which I can then view full
> screen. No save locally option, though.
> Which PDF link have you used?
To extract a book page-image in Firefox (and I'm using a slightly out of
date version, 3.0.14), select "Page Info" from the "Tools" menu. When the
sidebar opens, select the "Media" tab (second from left) which displays a
list of the media elements. Work down this list until the required image
appears in the lower window, and then click the "Save As" button in the
grey area between the upper and lower windows. As filename extension I
usually specify ".png" but maybe other things would work. Finally compile
the saved images into a PDF. For this I use OmniPage Pro, which is really
an OCR prog but with PDF facilities stuck on. No doubt a dedicated PDF
prog would make a better job of it.
Extracting images one by one in this manner is dreadfully laborious. But
if needs must . . .
> Ed
Patruus
Ed Cryer
"Johannes Patruus" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
Johannes, you're a gem. I used to earn my bread programming mainframe
computers, but you've got the skills of a whizzkid! Stick with them.
Things like that keep a mind wide open and well nourished.
Having thumbed through the G A Russell article I don't find Locke guilty
of plagiarism. The Arabic scholars had first access to Aristotle; this
is well known and fully accepted. But by the 17th century Aristotle was
well known in the West.
I had to read Locke's "Essay" from cover to cover and pass an exam on it
some years back. It is extremely detailed and academic in presentation.
If Locke had read Philosophus Autodidactus, I believe he would have
already been aware of the tabula rasa theory from Aristotle; and he
would have read the book almost as a commentary on the theory.
Philosophers through the ages have always been great readers; cloistered
monks and academics who live with their theories rather like most people
live with their children. They emote with them, fight for them, suffer
with them. And most can't say where particular ideas came from. An
example; Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is probably the most famous
modern philosophical work; every undergrad has to tackle it. And he said
that he was led to it "through recollections of David Hume". Which has
given many more scholars research work to find just what he took from
Hume. In addition other scholars have found sources for Hume's ideas.
Ed
Ed Cryer
"Johannes Patruus" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
Let's try and nail this download problem of yours. Give me all the info
on it that you can, and I'll consult a good computer expertise group.
Things like; error messages, download manager, when it works/ when it
doesn't.
Ed
Johannes Patruus
Not quite sure what you mean by download problem, Ed. The only real
problem I've had in this case is in getting Google Books to display all
the relevant pages, when it is precisely Google's intention to withhold
some pages to encourage purchasing the book.
> Ed
Patruus
Ed Cryer
"Johannes Patruus" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
Yes but I can always get the whole lot. So there's something amiss here.
I tell you what; give me links to some files that only come in part, and
I'll try from here.
Ed
Johannes Patruus
The whole lot of what? Are you saying you can view the whole of a book
that is designated as "Limited Preview", as is the case with book
containing Russell's article?
> I tell you what; give me links to some files that only come in part, and
> I'll try from here.
> Ed
Patruus
>
Ed Cryer
"B. T. Raven" <ni...@nihilo.net> wrote in message
news:ntCdnVYchMauZ7bW...@sysmatrix.net...
>
> Do you have a hard copy of Russell's book. What was on page 243?
> Anything to clinch the case that Locke read _Alive, Son of Aware_?
>
>>
>> Yes but I can always get the whole lot. So there's something amiss
>> here.
>
>
> Aren't you exaggerating here? If google offers no preview you can
> still
> view or download the whole thing???
>
> Here's is a test:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=XNcQMwAACAAJ&dq=Photii+myriobiblion&cd=1
>
>>
>> I tell you what; give me links to some files that only come in part,
>> and
>> I'll try from here.
>>
>> Ed
>>
Don't be silly. Your American English isn't that far from ours.
I think I see the situation now. We can all download the same amount; ie
everything actually offered. But Johannes uses %ages not pro rata to the
actual quantity offered, but pro rata to the quantity he'd like, ie the
full book. That's what threw me. He uses words like "stalled", and that
gave me the impression that his download had suddenly halted.
Ed
Johannes Patruus
> 3. Was Philosophus Autodidactus a major influence
> on Spinoza?
Dunno, but there's a proggy about Spinoza on the radio tonight:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pl6cf
Patruus