الفصل الرابع: في العلم المدون وموضوعه ومباديه ومسائله وغايتهBab 01 Fasl 04 — Subject Principles Problems and Purpose

Chapter Four: On Codified Knowledge, Its Subject, Principles, Problems, and Purpose

Know that the word knowledge, just as it is used for what corresponds to it—the names of codified sciences, such as grammar and jurisprudence—is also used in several senses.

* * *

[Printed page 38]

* * *

The names of the sciences are sometimes used for their particular problems, as when one says, “So-and-so knows grammar”; sometimes for assent to those problems on the basis of their proof; and sometimes for the disposition acquired through repeatedly making those assents—that is, the disposition to recall them. The disposition may also mean complete preparedness: having what suffices to inquire into whatever is sought.

The precise account is that the real meaning of knowledge is apprehension. This meaning has an object, namely the known, and it has something that accompanies its acquisition and serves as a means to its continuance, namely the disposition. Applying the word knowledge to each of these is either a customary or technical literal usage, or a well-known metaphor. It may also be applied to the totality of the problems, conceptual principles, assentive principles, and subjects. Hence they say: The parts of the sciences are three.

The names of the sciences may also be applied to a universal, summary concept that is made distinct in its definition. If it distinguishes the thing itself, it is a nominal definition; if it states its necessary concomitant, it is a nominal description. Its real definition, however, is achieved through conceiving its problems or conceiving the assents related to them, for the reality of every science is the problems of that science or assent to them. Its principles and the instruments of its subjects are counted as parts of it only because of the intensity of its need for them. What we have mentioned can be explained in three statements.

Statement One: On the Subject

Know that human felicity depends on knowing the realities of things and their states, to the extent of human capacity. Since realities and their states are numerous and varied, the ancients undertook to organize them and make their teaching easy. They isolated the essential states related to one thing or to things that bear a suitable relation to one another, codified them separately, counted them as one science, and called that thing or those things the subject of the science, because the subjects of its problems return to it.

The subject of a science is that to which the subjects of its problems can be reduced. This is what they mean in defining it as “that in which its essential accidents are investigated.” Thus every group of states, by sharing a subject, became a separate science distinguished in itself from a group sharing another subject. Sciences therefore differ from one another through their subjects, a distinction they recognized while allowing that they might also differ in another respect, such as their purpose or predicate.

Later scholars followed this second method in their sciences as well, and it is a practice they considered beneficial for teaching and learning. Rationally, however, there is nothing to prevent every problem from being counted as a science in its own right and given separate instruction and codification; nor is there anything to prevent numerous problems that do not share a subject from being counted as one science and codified together, if they share another respect, such as being judgments of one thing about another.

It is therefore known that the reality of every codified science is the problems sharing one subject, and that every science has a subject and a purpose. Every science has a unifying aspect that disciplines its many problems and makes them, in that respect, one science. The first unifying aspect is essential, while the second is accidental. Sciences are consequently defined sometimes by their subject—for example, logic is “a science in which the states of known things are investigated”—and sometimes by their purpose: “a rule-governed instrument whose observance protects the mind from error in thought.”

The states related to one unified thing, or to things with a suitably significant relation, are either related by an essential matter, such as line, surface, and mathematical body, which share magnitude in general as something essential to them, as in geometry; or by an accidental matter, such as the Book, the Sunnah, consensus, and analogy, which share the fact that they lead to legal rulings, as in the principles of jurisprudence. Such states are essential accidents that attach to the quiddity as such, without the mediation of an extraneous matter.

As for what all the investigations of a science return to, it either returns to the very thing that serves as the intermediary—for example, in arithmetic, “number is either even or odd”; to a particular beneath it, as in “three is odd,” and in natural philosophy, “form is destroyed and replaced through matter, not from it”; or to an essential accident of it, as in “the singular is either prime or composite.”

The strange accident is what attaches to a quiddity through an extraneous matter, whether that matter is broader or narrower than it. Sciences do not investigate it. A geometer does not investigate whether a curved line is more beautiful than a straight one, or whether a circle resembles a straight line or is its opposite, because beauty and opposition are strange to the subject of his science, magnitude. They attach to magnitude not because it is magnitude, but because of a description broader than it, such as its existence or nonexistence. Likewise, a physician does not investigate whether a wound is round or not, because roundness does not attach to a body insofar as it is wounded, but through a broader matter. If a physician says, “This wound is round, and circles are the widest shapes, so it will heal slowly,” what he has said does not belong to his science.

Know also that the subject of one science may be the subject of another, narrower than it, broader than it, or separate from it while both fall under a third thing. They may also be separate without falling under a third thing, while sharing one aspect and not another; or they may be completely separate. These are six divisions.

First, the subject of one science may be identical with the subject of another, provided that each is qualified by a restriction different from the other. Thus the bodies of the universe are the subject of astronomy with respect to form, and the subject of natural philosophy with respect to nature; the two sciences are separated by these two respects. If some problems share both subject and predicate, there is no harm, since their proofs differ. For example, the earth's being spherical and its being in the center of the heavens are proved one way in astronomy and another way in natural philosophy.

Second and third, the subject of one science may be narrower or broader than that of another. Their generality and particularity may be real, through an essential matter such as the universal being the genus of the particular; or accidental. The first is like magnitude and mathematical body: mathematical body is narrower, while magnitude is its genus. Magnitude is the subject of geometry, and mathematical body the subject of solid geometry. Another example is medicine, whose subject is the human body, a species of the subject of natural philosophy, namely body in general. The second is like existent and magnitude: existent is the subject of metaphysics, and magnitude the subject of geometry. Magnitude is narrower than existent, not because existent is its genus, but because magnitude is an accident common to it.

Fourth, the two subjects may be separate while both fall under a third thing, as the subjects of geometry and arithmetic fall under quantity; they are then called equal.

Fifth, they may share one aspect but not another, like the subjects of medicine and ethics, whose subjects share the human faculties.

Sixth, they may be separate, like the subjects of arithmetic and medicine: number and the human body share neither commonality nor equality.

Reminder: The subject of a science is not established by proof, because what is sought in every science is the essential accidents predicated of its subject. A thing cannot be an essential accident of itself; it must either be self-evident or be proved in another, higher science, such that the subject of this science is an essential accident of the subject of that one, until one reaches the highest science, whose subject is the existent. The subject of that science must nevertheless be conceived and affirmed in some way. Thus one science being above or below another returns to what we have explained. Understand this.

* * *

[Printed page 40]

* * *

Statement Two: On the Principles

These are the pieces of knowledge used in the sciences as foundations for their acquired conclusions. They are either conceptual, such as definitions of the subject, its parts, its particulars, and its predicates, since these things must be conceived through a well-known definition; or assentive, namely the propositions from which their syllogisms are composed. Assentive principles are of two kinds.

First, they may be self-evident, and are called common axioms. Some are principles of every science, such as: negation and affirmation cannot both occur and cannot both be absent. Others belong to particular sciences, such as Euclid's statement: If equal quantities are taken from two equal things, the remainders are equal.

Second, they may not be self-evident, but must be accepted, and are to be explained in another science; relative to that other science they are problems. If acceptance is based on confidence in the science, they are called postulates, as when a jurist says, “This is forbidden by consensus.” The authority of consensus is accepted within jurisprudence because it is a problem of the principles of jurisprudence. If acceptance is based on rejection or challenge, they are called petitions, as when someone says, “This ruling was established by juristic preference.” Accepting its authority among the relevant scholars is a petition. A single premise may therefore be a petition for one person and a postulate for another.

Definitions and accepted premises may also be called posits. Each of them is a problem in another, higher science, continuing upward. Some problems of a lower science may be subjects and principles for a higher science, provided that they are not explained in the lower science by principles built upon those same problems; rather, they must be premises self-evident in themselves or established by other principles. Otherwise circularity would result.

Nor may any non-self-evident premise that belongs among postulates or petitions be proved if all the aims of the sciences depend on it, because that too would entail circularity. If only some of their aims depend on it, it may be explained within that science. The first are called general principles, such as the claim that reflection benefits the eye; the second are specific principles, such as the refutation of rational accounts of good and evil.

Statement Three: On the Problems of the Sciences

These are the propositions in which, in each science, the relations of its predicates to its subjects are sought by proof. As explained, every codified science consists of problems sharing one subject. The subject of a problem may itself be the subject of that science, as the grammarian's statement, “Every utterance is composed of two nouns, or of a noun and a verb,” for utterance is also the subject of grammar.

The subject of a problem may be the subject of the science together with an essential accident, as in geometry: “A magnitude separate from a thing is separate from every magnitude that shares with it.” The subject of the problem is the separate magnitude, and separateness is its essential accident.

The subject of a problem may be a species of the subject of the science, as in morphology: “A noun is either triliteral or more than triliteral.” The subject of the science is the word, and the noun is one of its species.

It may be a species of the subject together with an essential accident, as in geometry: “Whenever a straight line falls upon a straight line, the two angles formed are either right angles or equal to them.” The line is a species of magnitude, and straightness is an essential accident of it.

It may be an essential accident of the subject of the science, as in geometry: “Every triangle has angles equal to two right angles.” The triangle is one of the essential accidents of magnitude.

Conclusion of the Chapter: On the Purpose of the Sciences

Know that when an effect follows from an action, that effect, insofar as it is the result and fruit of the action, is called its benefit; insofar as it lies at the end of the action, it is called its purpose. The benefit and purpose of an action are identical in essence and different in consideration.

If the effect so named is the cause that prompts the agent to undertake the action, it is called, with respect to the agent, an aim and intention, and with respect to the action, a final cause. Aim and final cause are identical in essence and different in consideration. If it is not a cause for undertaking the action, it is only a benefit and purpose. The purpose is therefore broader than the final cause. Thus, as the eminent al-Shareef al-Jurjaanee[Edition footnote 1] explained, the purpose of a science is that for whose sake the science is sought.

The non-instrumental sciences have as their purpose the acquisition of the sciences themselves, because they are sought for their own sake, even if other benefits may follow from them; a difference in consideration is sufficient for this distinction. A thing's being an end for itself entails that its mental existence is the cause of its external existence, and there is no difficulty in that. The purpose of the instrumental sciences, however, is the acquisition of something else, since they concern the manner of action. What is sought from them is the performance of the action, whether that action is sought for its own sake or for another matter that is the final purpose of those sciences.

[Edition footnote 1] al-Jurjaanee; his biography was given earlier on page 23.

* * *

[Printed page 42]

* * *