Les jeudi 4 et vendredi 5 avril 2024 a lieu le colloque international « Between Reason and Authority: Diverse Paradigms of Doing Science in Pre-Modern Arabo-Islamic World » organisé à l’Université Adam Mickiewicz de Poznań.

Argumentaire

Like all the major monotheistic religions Islam had to deal with fundamental epistemological dichotomy between the divine revelation and human reason. The various schools of discursive theology (kalām) like Mu’tazilites and Ash’arites as well as Hanbalites/Muhaddiṯūn proposed their ways to solve the dilemma by differently weighing the status and usage of both principles. The issue was also of major importance for the Islamicate philosophers (falāsifa) who in later time struggled for legitimacy in more and more scripturally oriented milieu. This dichotomy influenced also the ideas of classification of knowledge developed by many thinkers, most notably Ibn Khaldun (1332-1408), who divided the sciences into “transmitted” (‘ulūm naqliyya) and “intellectual” (‘ulūm ‘aqliyya). The first branch encompasses knowledge transmitted from a trustworthy authority – be it divine (like in the case of Qur’anic revelation), prophetical (sunnah and jurisprudence) or ancestorial (history, language, literature and rhetoric) – and depends on the chain of transmitters (isnād) as the measure of veracity. On the other hand the second branch includes philosophy: logic, physics and metaphysics; as well as natural (medicine and agriculture) and mathematical sciences such arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music and the occult. These fields of inquiry are to be based on individual reasoning and be verifiable by means of syllogism.

During the conference we hope to investigate both epistemological principles as well as theoretical foundations of the sciences based on them, their interrelations and different approaches of historical thinkers to questions such as: what is the hierarchy of sciences, are they opposed to each other, how to reconcile them, are their subjects different, where they do cross over. Various classifications of knowledge and educational strategies and practices are also the object of our interest. Another scope of interest will be the achievements of Islamicate intellectual sciences and their impact on European Medieval and Early-Modern scientifical development.

The year 2024 marks 750 solar year anniversary of passing of Nāsir al-Dīn al-Tuṣī (1201-1274), a polymath engaged in developing multiple fields from both transmitted and intellectual sciences. Writing both in Arabic and Persian he left a collection of over 150 works. From Shi’ite theology to Ethics to mathematics and astronomy, to name just a few fields of his interest, he left a durable mark on many of them. He invented so called “Tusi-couple” that might have indirectly influenced astronomical models of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). The papers concerning aspects of al-Tusi’s work will be equally welcomed.

Programme

4 avril 2024

09h30 : ouverture du colloque

09h40 : discours d’ouverture par Krzysztof Stronski, Estera Zeromska et Tomasz Wicherkiewicz

10h00-10h45 : John Walbridge (Indiana University, Bloomington), « Islamic Philosophy in the West: A Fifty-Year Perspective »

10h45-11h30 : Katarzyna Pachniak (University of Warsaw), « The Influence of Muslim Philosophy in Poland of the late Middle Ages »

11h30-12h00 : pause café

Experts panel

Session 1
12h00-13h20
Modératrice : Katarzyna Pachniak (University of Warsaw)

12h00-12h30 : Andreas Eckart (Universität zu Köln), « Knowledge and role of the Milky Way in the early Islamic Civilization »

12h30-13h00 : Godefroid de Callataÿ (Université Catholique de Louvain), «  M-Classi, a new digital tool for the classification of the sciences, in Islam and beyond »

13h00-13h20 : discussion

13h20-14h20 : déjeuner

Individual Sciences Classified

Session 2
14h20-15h40
Modérateur : Łukasz Piątak (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

14h20-14h40 (en visio) : Sébastien Moureau (Université Catholique de Louvain), « The Place of Alchemy in the Classification of Sciences in the Arabo-Muslim World: a Case Study of the use of M-Classi »

14h40-15h00 (en visio) : Aydogan Kars (Monash University, Melbourne), « Prophetic Medicine as a Transmitted Science: Implications and Transformations »

15h00-15h20 : Filip Jakubowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan), « Adab or ʿilm? History and its place in the world of Arabo-Islamic science(s) »

15h20-15h40 : discussion

15h40-16h00 : pause café

Conflict or harmony? Between human reason and revelation

Session 3
16h00-17h20
Modérateur : Filip Jakubowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

16h00-16h20 : Anna Izdebska (Humboldt University, Berlin), « Reason and authority in al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik’s gnomological history of Greek philosophy »

16h20-16h40 : Husayn Ibrahim (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), « Harmony of Epistemes: The Integration of Philosophical and Religious Elements in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 672/1274) Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī »

16h40-17h00 (en visio) : Amir Gamini (University of Teheran), « Muslim Ulama on the Conflict between holy texts and Ptolemaic Cosmology »

17h00-17h20 : discussion

5 avril 2024

Science in language and literature

Session 4
9h30-11h20
Modérateur : Marcin Michalski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

09h30-09h50 : Barbara Gryczan (University of Warsaw), « Biblical Hebrew in the context of classical Arabic poetics – the theory of ideal Hebrew poetry according to Moses ibn ʿEzra’s Kitāb al-Muḥāḍara wa-l-Muḏākara »

09h50-10h10 : Jacek Jarmoszko (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), « Füzuli and Aion: On some rare astrological associations in 16th-century Persian and Turkish lyrical poetry »

10h10-10h30 (en visio) : Stanisław Jaśkowski (University of Warsaw), « The Titles Used in the Documents and the Perception of Science and Scholars in the Safavid Period »

10h30-10h50 : Andreas Eckart (Universität zu Köln), « Ali Mohammad al-Nili’s appraisal of Bab Zuwayla »

10h50-11h20 : discussion

11h20-11h40 : pause café

The Occult Sciences (al-ʿulūm al-gharība)

11:40-13:30
Session 5
Modérateur : John Walbridge (Indiana University, Bloomington)

11h40-12h00 : Łukasz Piątak (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), « The obscure sub-branches of the Divine Tree of knowledge. Al-Suhrawardī, al-Shahrazūrī and the science behind the Illuminationist astral worship »

12h00-12h20 (en visio) : M. Fariduddin Attar (Orient-Institut, Beirut), « Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Occult Writings: Between Heresiology, Doxography, and Speculative Cosmology »

12h20-12h40 (en visio) : Nejra Salihbegovic (Monash University, Melbourne), « Lettrism in Sufism and Kabbalah: Ibn ʿArabī (1165-1240) and the Zohar »

12h40-13h00 (en visio) : Hüseyin Cahit Sarıkaya (Istanbul University), « The Paradigm of theory into the Practice: Al-ʿulūm al-gharība and Early Modern Islamic Political thought (1400s-1500s) »

13h00-13h30 : discussion

13h30-14h30 : pause déjeuner

In the footsteps of Aristotle: Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd

Session 6
14h30-15h50
Modérateur : Andreas Eckart (Universität zu Köln)

14h30-14h50 (en visio) : Pouyan Shahidi (Indiana University, Bloomington), « Bridging between disciplines and authorities. From Ptolemy’s mathematized celestial motions to a new Aristotelian astro-physical model for the universe »

14h50-15h10 : Ruizhi Ma (Humboldt University, Berlin), « The Expansion and Refinement of Aristotle’s Color Sequence by Avicenna and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī »

15h10-15h30 : Wisam KH Abdul-Jabbar (University of Alberta), « Ibn Rushd on Education: Pedagogy of Deliberation and Intercultural Discourse »

15h30-15h50 : discussion

15h50-16h10 : pause café

Classifications of sciences

Session 7
16h10-17h30
Modérateur : Marcin Styszynski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)

16h10-16h30 (en visio) : Muhammad Kamal (Cairo University), « Taṣawwur and Taṣdīq in the Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī’s Classification of Knowledge »

16h30-16h50 (en visio) : Matthew Melvin-Koushki (University of South Carolina), « A New Framework for Early Modern History of Science: The Arabo-Persian Encyclopedic Tradition Revisited »

16h50-17h10 (en visio) : Mykhaylo Yakubovych (University of Freiburg/University of Coventry), « From codification to canonizations: Muhammad al-Aqkirmani (d. 1761) and his book “Definition of the Sciences” »

17h10-17h30 : discussion

17h30-17h50 : résumé et conclusion du colloque

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