Marvellous “Properties” 2: Philosophy

Now that we have concluded our reading of Ibn al-Jazzār’s Risāla fī’l-khawāss, the Epistle on Special Properties, let us see how it touches on some fundamental questions on the value of experience and experiment vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge.

The Risāla is a small work that alternates between a few theoretical paragraphs and an abundance of “examples” to justify its scientific thesis. The thesis, grosso modo, is that one should not rely on theory alone and much less on hearsay alone when considering the extraordinary natural properties and effects of some substances. Following every iteration of this line of argument, Ibn al-Jazzār provides us with a wealth of examples to make his point, citing an impressive roster of traditional authorities. Here is a sample,

According to al-Tabarī, when the tongue of a hoopoe is hung above someone who is forgetful, he will recover his memories. // They say that when you take a fang from the upper left jaw of a crocodile, and hang it above someone afflicted by fever, his fever will go away.

Help yourself to materia medica!

Naturally, during our reading we had many occasions for good cheer with the sometimes outrageous and often bewildering examples, commenting on how we should make sure to acquire this or that particularly helpful substance, like body parts of tortoises or lions. But beyond the banter, two points are worth reflecting on: 1) the vanity of rational understanding in the face of the marvellous, and 2) the unquestionable value of experience when reported from trustworthy authorities.

Ibn al-Jazzār goes almost as far as ridiculing the attempt at rationalising the wondrous properties of nature, making a perennially valid epistemological point: how can you claim that something is impossible or absurd, and not simply a reflection of shortcomings in your perception and understanding? This attitude is precisely the acknowledgement of and openness to “anomalies” that, in Kuhn’s language, may give way to needed new paradigms.

The second point follows: you have to stubbornly trust your own experience of the phenomena or, if not your very own (and here comes the twist), the experience of fully trustworthy authorities. That is, the chain of authorities is not hearsay and not mere bibliography, it is as if we ourselves had seen the fever abate under the crocodile's fang, and memories return under the hoopoe’s tongue. I may not have been there and made these experiences with crazy substances, but I trust Aristotle, and Galen, and Apollonius etc.

As ever, we find here how directly our very modern and cutting-edge questions are in conversation with medieval authors, and how from subjects like magic, alchemy and all that “crass baseless superstition” we are questioned, and indeed assayed and improved in our theory and our practice. Ergo, if you have some Arabic, don’t hesitate and join our weekly reading group, restarting in September. [J. Acevedo]

Marvellous “Properties” 1: Authorities

After completing our reading of Sirafī’s True Stories of the Seas and their Marvels, we have started work on the 10th-century Epistle on the Special Properties (Risāla fī'l-khawāss) of Ahmad ibn al-Jazzār. The word khawāss here refers to the special properties, often magical or wondrous, of certain substances and beings, like the magnet, a first-time mother’s milk, or the “royal snake” (i.e. the basilisk). These entities informed an abundant literature on alchemy and magic, and were readily incorporated into more “scientific” treatises, especially medicinal, like herbals and lapidaries. As our reading continues, it becomes increasingly apparent that in spite of the work’s title, we are not far at all from the topic of mirabilia/‘ajā’ib, the wonders of creation. In fact, this text is the main source of Albertus Magnus’ De mirabilibus mundi.

As the reader can imagine, treatises on magical properties can be great fun. We learn about stones that can attract any kind of substance, the usefulness of carrying around a little bit of human bone, or how to avoid being killed by the gaze of the basilisk, to say nothing of natural contraceptive methods like drinking mule’s urine. But apart from such eminently practical content, these first pages have made me reflect on two aspects worth commenting on: the chain of authorities, and the philosophical stance of the author.

Hippocrates (4th c. BC), Galen (3rd c. AD) and Avicenna (11th c. AD)
having a proper learned chat.

The authorities from whom the reports of marvellous properties proceed make a formidable roster, and are a sort of Who Is Who of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. They include first of all Aristoteles, then of course Galen, the ubiquitous Alexander (the Great, often identified with the Quranic Dhu’l-Qarnayn), Cleopatra, Arab luminaries such as Ibn Masawayh, and “Byzantine” scholars such as Qusta ibn Luqa. What is most remarkable about this fascinating list —an advanced educational syllabus in itself, for whomever is curious— is how easily and stably it moved across languages, cultures and textual genres over the centuries. Never mind that you were reading about navigation, medicine, alchemy or astronomy, you would just as easily come across the same authorities.

The enterprise of science is always necessarily alternating through time between its conservative and revolutionary tendencies: tradition versus innovation, respect for the past versus embrace of the novel—this is the way (of knowledge), because it would be absurd not to capitalise on the achievements of our predecessors. Now this term, “respect”, means originally not only to “look back to”, or “to look again”, but also, due to the intensive function of the prefix re-, “to look very intently at something”. One could say that the respectful study of the traditional authorities has to include all these nuances: to go back again and again to the same authors, and also to look at them with patience and persistence, not sparing efforts to understand their ideas, and struggling with them in the pursuit of knowledge. This is how we try to work in our weekly reading groups, ever hoping to engage in the timeless Geistergespräch, the conversation of minds through the ages.*

As for the second aspect, the philosophical stance of Ibn al-Jazzar and how it relates to contemporary science and our daily research, well… I'm afraid it may have to wait until our next post. Stay tuned! [J. Acevedo]

* You are welcome to join us, it's free.

Circles and Stars Between Cosmology and Cosmography

The recently-opened Lisbon exhibition “The Emperor’s Gift: Circles of Knowledge” brings to light a recently-discovered 19th-century Arabic manuscript, a (literally) dizzying and (literally) encyclopaedic collection of circular diagrams and tables covering all the topics between heaven and earth. In fact, this Gulbenkian manuscript, called in Arabic Tuhfat al-Khaqan: Dawa’ir al-‘Ulum wa-Jadawil al-Ruqum (The Emperor’s Gift: Circles of the Sciences and Tables of the Numerals), is organized thematically in a way that reminds us of medieval encyclopaedias, notably from Ming China, following the tripartite arrangement of Heaven–Earth–Man (Tian–Di–Ren) or, roughly, cosmogony/cosmology–geography–beliefs/psychology.

The manuscript is literally dizzying because the convoluted paths of minuscule lettering force the reader to turn the head or turn the text in many ways to be able to follow: you actually have to “get your head round it”! And it is literally encyclopaedic because the great part of its contents is about transmitting a teaching (Gr. paideia) in a circular format (Gr. enkyklon): “a teaching in circles” is as literal a rendering of the Greek enkyklopaideia as we can get. This makes us think a lot about the conceptual and visual power of the circle.

Mirza Muhammad al-Akhbari, Tuhfat al-khaqan, 19th-c. MCG manuscript, fols. 2v-3r.

And in turn (how else?), from our particular RUTTER angle, thinking of navigation, orientation, windroses, and rhumb diagrams, we realise that this exhibition is at heart about one of the fundamental questions in philosophy of science: that of mathematical realism, in a Pythagorean and Galilean way, revived in our days by the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH). The question, succinctly put, is, how can we explain that material reality be so adequately described by mathematical formulas and geometrical diagrams?

Sundial, courtyard of the Great Mosque of Kairouan.

Even only grazing this topic, needless to say, exceeds the scope of these brief lines, but let us suggest that a useful answer may be related, once again, to the Great Triad (三才 sancai) of Chinese cosmology, to a certain essential correspondence, a very familiar je ne sais quoi shared by Heaven, Earth and Man, that is, the physical order of the world beyond the earth, the order of our planet, and the properties of our mental apparatus, our consciousness. The key underlying “forms” to study, consider, and contemplate, are three: orthogonality (the grid), concentricity and radiality. This manuscript, and the extremely suggestive Gulbenkian exhibition are at once evocative, aesthetically delightful, and seriously provocative in the best philosophical way. They are welcome in every way in our times of sound bites and attention-stealing technology. [J. Acevedo]

A Great Book Read in Good Company

After months of slow travel between the dangerous reefs and sand banks of the Red Sea coast, tacking northwards through narrow channels, sometimes against the current!, along rows of half-sunk islets and rocks, we have come to the end of chapter 12 of Ibn Majid’s Fawa’id, “On the Red Sea”. And so we come to the end of the book, closing a three-year long cycle (around one hundred meetings), tackling head-on every week the challenges posed by a very technical 500-year-old Arabic manuscript. It is worth pausing for a minute to reflect on the book as a whole, and also on the format of our group reading.

The lingering question, almost as an aftertaste, is still about the readership of the book. The Fawa’id is, explicitly, the work of the old age of a veteran sea captain, full of diversions as he brings up literary rarities in the middle of technical discussions, rambling and then coming back to his topic. It is in turn charming, bewildering, puzzling and annoying, but always informative. Now, who would read this among the pilots and the sea folk? One fascinating detail, partly as an answer, is that centuries later we find excerpts of the Fawa’id copied verbatim in very technical seafaring manuals called rahmanaj. These newer manuals are opening new vistas into the evolution and spread of Indian Ocean nautical literature, and we are already working on this “continuation” of the story.

Speaking of readership, isn’t it amazing that so long after its composition we have gathered every week for over three years to jointly decipher and comment every line? Some texts like the Fawa’id are called “classics”—understanding that the label can be applied more or less loosely, and that there are variations of quality among them. They elicit an interest century after century, and more specifically, it is as if they issue a permanent invitation for collegial engagement: “Hey, get some friends together to read me!”, or maybe, more solemnly: “Tolle, lege!”

This perennial convocation of the great books is at the unchanging basis of what was called in medieval Europe the communio or universitas magistrorum, the “society of masters”, those who had been prepared to read and understand the texts. The Latin version of our saying “three’s company,” is in fact tres faciunt collegium, which can be interpreted as “three make a college,” meaning that in the quest for knowledge, you cannot “go it alone”—non solus!.

Like all major institutions, universities undergo change: study methods evolve, governance errs and finance creeps in, and, in short, the flesh is weak. But if you go ahead and find yourself the closest group of at least three who are responding to the appeal of a great book, do know that there, sharing doubts and certainties, and exposing your ignorance and your knowledge around a central text, you will be back at the root, reviving and strengthening the essence of the university. [Juan Acevedo]

Libraries of the East, Libraries of the West

Ten days of archival work in Cairo bring to my mind strongly the words of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, “The East is not quite just East, and the West is not quite just West” (lā al-sharqu sharqun tamāman wa-lā al-gharbu gharbun tamāman). In spite of our facile view of a compartmentalised world, and in spite of stark superficial differences, this insightful observation applies in many fields of human culture. The great libraries of the world, and in particular the great collections of manuscripts, confirm the poet’s intuition, insofar as they owe their very existence and appeal to materials from disparate origins and from a wide range of chronological origins.

It is beyond question that you will find more Italian manuscripts at the Vatican, and more Arabic manuscripts at Dar al-Kutub in Cairo, or French works in Paris, but what really characterises the great collections is that, like complex geological formations, they consist of layer upon layer of historical endowments. This is how, on one hand, they put things rightly in perspective, by showing how dynasties and temporal powers wane in the face of the timeless quest for knowledge, and on the other hand, by opening unexpected avenues of research and presenting the researcher with surprising choices, with prompts to re-think hypotheses, and in short, to do the living work of science, by mercurially adapting, and fine-tuning again and again the delicate balance between phenomena (what we find—or finds us!) and our theories (how we make sense of the findings).

Now, to add a dimension to Darwish’s sentence, and so to share it as it were from the horse’s mouth, I would suggest that the great manuscript collections also teach us that, “The Middle Ages are not quite just Middle Ages, and Modernity is not quite just Modernity.”

Clear periodisation becomes easier and convincing the more we distance ourselves from the manuscript sources. I mean, it is very easy to draw chronological boundaries and razor sharp periods when we are dealing with secondary literature, when we are comfortable in the coziness of the printed page, but when we face the centuries-old accrual of material from before the countries we know, from obscure origins in cities now extinct, and facing even more obscure transmission lines, we have to be chronologically humble, and to tread carefully, lets we are unfaithful to the evidence. In actual manuscript “reality”, there is an intertwining of ages, a beautiful and exhilarating sense of the interpenetration of historical periods which is partly what makes working with primary sources so inspiring, exciting, and challenging! [Juan Acevedo]

Infirmities of Time

As a new Gregorian year sets in, and as we start a new year of Arabic readings, this week’s passage of Ibn Mājid’s Fawā’id could not be more appropriate for a good reflection on the passing of time.

In one of his trademark digressions from the hard technical details of his craft, Ibn Mājid launches into a lengthy poem lamenting the swift passage of time, speaking of lovers in the night, turtledoves, wine and stringed instruments—all the usual imagery of medieval Arabic love poetry—“pierced by dawn and by the muezzin’s voice as if by an arrow.” All this, remember, at the end of a lengthy chapter on sailing seasons, and on the calendrical accuracy and traditional knowledge needed to travel safely across the Indian Ocean. And then comes his reflection after the poem,

“It may be that the monsoon (sailing season) too is afflicted by time with some illness which our minds cannot begin to grasp. Because it is said that every year the season comes later by a quarter of a day of the sphere.”

Layla Visits Majnun in the Palm Grove, page from a 16th-c. manuscript (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

This ingenious return from the romance of the previous verses to the chapter’s subject matter gives us concrete scientific indications and also a cosmological subtlety.

The scientific indication has to do with the specific solar calendar used by the Arab pilots at the time. It is known that it was a variation of the Yazdgerdi calendar, itself a development of the Zoroastrian calendar, but it is hard to pin down exactly which variant. Here it seems clear that it was a calendar of 365 days without any adjustment for the extra quarter of a day (the tropical year has roughly 365 days and a quarter), and this explains the fact that the seasonal dates were shifting, one day every four years—a known feature of some of the early Persian calendars.

The subtlety has to do with the Arabic word ‘illah, translated here as “illness” and often meaning also a “cause”. Suffice to say that the three semi-vowels central to Arabic writing are called hurūf al-‘ilal, “causal letters” or “letters of infirmity”, corresponding to the Hebrew “mothers of the reading” (imot qeri’ah/matres lectionis)—by being “weak”, like “accidents” of the consonantal fabric, they make articulation possible; they are the efficient causes of articulation.

In this particular case, the infirmity is the ever-uneasy discrepancy between solar days and the solar year (why, oh why can’t the sun return to the equinoctial point in an exact number of days!?). But through this “weakness” in the astronomical fabric, how many changes are set in motion, and how much science has developed!

Ibn Mājid’s point is a sort of poignant physico-lyrical subtlety: the order of the world is full of such little ”cracks”, “weak spots” which are as discreet doors to the forces of causality. They are happy accidents, hotspots for discovery, invention, but also turning points away from every stability, and so unhappy and sad from the point of view of the contented lovers.

As we start a new year, here is to many happy accidents of invention and discovery to our readers and colleagues. Kullu ‘am wa antum bi-khayr! [JA]

Knowledge Weaponized

Towards the end of chapter 6 of his Fawā’id, after going over the complexities of various kinds of routes and course-plotting options, Ibn Mājid explains:

I have made distinctions (farraqtu), because the different skills (‘ulūm, “sciences”) are like weapons: sometimes you need a bow and sometimes a sword, sometimes a spear and sometimes an ax or a dagger, and yet, for all this, you may never be dispensed of using a knife.

The explicit point seems to be that every skill, as a subdiscipline of knowledge, has its own irreplaceable and particular application, and that it is necessary to have a rounded preparation, because, as he puts it later, borrowing a saying from Imam ‘Ali: “man is the enemy of anything he is ignorant of,” or rather, given the context, “man is at war with everything he is ignorant of” (al-insān ‘aduww mā jahilahu). That is (and we must put it in the context of piloting a ship through the ocean and having to land safely thousands of miles away), everything we ignore is a hostile prompt to catastrophic failure. And the obvious way to be prepared, or armed, is to acquire the panoply of knowledge required by our respective field.

The bodhisattva Kuan Yin, armed against ignorance (Wellcome Collection).

The implicit point is in that initial “making distinctions”, associated to terms like farq, “distinction, discrimination, severance”, and furqān, an epithet of the Qur’an meaning “a criterion”. As it happens, this root-meaning of division and discernment is exactly the same of the English-Germanic skill, and also of Latin scientia. The suggestion that science and skill have a common origin in discernment/dissection should give us pause now, as it would be better developed in another post.

So now, instead, going back to the image of waging war against ignorance, we can see how the mighty ancient saying is so much better when applied in science than in politics: Divide et impera! or in Arabic, Farriq tasud!, discern and you shall rule. [JA]