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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Logic in the Islamic Legacy: a General Overview Dissention from Aristotelian Legacy The Avicennan Tradition of the Twelfth Century Avicenna (d. 1037) was beginning his career far away in the east, in Khurasan (Persia). Led by his Intuition, he presented himself as an autodidact able to assess and repair the Aristotelian tradition.

Here is what he says in the Syllogism of the Cure, written about midway through his career: 'You should realize that most of what Aristotle's writings have to say about the modal mixes are tests, and are not genuine opinions - this will become clear to you in a number of places…' (Avicenna (1964), Qiyâs 204.10-12) Of all his many works, it is Avicenna's Pointers and Reminders that had most impact on subsequent generations of logicians.

From it we may note a few broad but typical differences from the Prior Analytics in the syllogistic. First, the “absolute” ( mutlaqât , often translated “assertoric”) propositions have truth-conditions stipulated somewhat like those stipulated for possibility propositions (so that, for example, the contradictory of an absolute is not an absolute, absolute e-propositions do not convert, second-figure syllogisms with absolute premises are sterile).

Secondly, Avicenna begins to explore the logical properties of propositions of the form every J is B while J. Thirdly, Avicenna divides syllogistic into connective ( iqtirânî ) and repetitive ( istithnâ'î ) forms, a division which replaces the old one into categorical and hypothetical (Avicenna (1971) al-Ishârât 309, 314, 374). We may call a logician “Avicennan” if he adopts these doctrines. Avicennan logicians embarked upon repairing and reformulating Avicenna's work.

Just as Avicenna had declared himself free to rework Aristotle as Intuition dictated, so too Avicenna's school regarded itself free to repair the Avicennan system as need arose, whether from internal inconsistencies, or from intellectual requirements extrinsic to the system. A major early representative of this trend is ‘Umar ibn Sahlan as-Sawi (d. 1148) who began, in his Logical Insights for Nasîraddîn, to rework Avicenna's modal syllogistic.

It was to be his students and their students, however, who would go on to make the final changes to Avicennan logic that characterized the subject that came to be taught in the madrasa. Tûsî and the Neo-Avicennan Response The great Shî‘î scholar Nasiraddîn at-Tûsî (d.