Book/Printed Material Tract on the Methods of Enquiry.
About this Item
Title
- Tract on the Methods of Enquiry.
Summary
- This short tract on dialectics is attributed to Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Ashraf al-Husayni al-Samarqandi, a 13th-century logician, mathematician, and astronomer, whose biography is not well known. His name, however, suggests he was from Samarqand in present-day Uzbekistan. It was largely this tract-his major work on logic and the subject of several commentaries-that established him as a logician. The tract is comprised of three parts. The first is dedicated to the definition of a number of concepts, including munazarah (comparison), dalil (evidence), taʻlil (reasoning), and muʻaradah (rebuttal). In the second part, the author employs these concepts to lay out a theoretical framework for reasoning. The third part includes three masaʼil (propositions) pertaining to the concept of necessary and possible kinds of existence; issues that engaged earlier kalam (literally, the science of debate) theologians as well. The tract, overall, is a discussion of the methods of intellectual investigation and reasoning used by earlier Muslim and Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Al-Samarqandi also wrote works on astronomy, theology, and mathematics. His Kitāb ashkāl al-ta'sīs (Book on the fundamental theorems), a summary of 35 fundamental propositions of Euclid's geometry, is also well regarded among mathematicians.
Names
- Samarqandī, Muḥammad ibn Ashraf, 13th century Author.
Created / Published
- [place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1250 to 1299]
Headings
- - Uzbekistan
- - 1250 to 1299
- - Arabic manuscripts
- - Logic
- - Naskh script
- - Philosophy
Notes
- - Title devised, in English, by Library staff.
- - "This copy is bound with Tamḥiṣ al-talkhiṣ (Critical examination of the summary of al-Qazwini), a work on Arabic rhetoric by al-Aqhisari (1544--1616)."--Note extracted from World Digital Library.
- - Original resource extent: 23 folios.
- - Original resource at: Wellcome Library.
- - Content in Arabic.
- - Description based on data extracted from World Digital Library, which may be extracted from partner institutions.
Medium
- 1 online resource.
Digital Id
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2021667396
Online Format
- compressed data
- image