Ibn Sina

Jabir ibn Hayyan founded modern chemistry, built the world's first laboratory in the 8th century.

Look at Ibn Sina, whose medical encyclopedia served as the ultimate authority in European universities for half a millennium.

Look at Al-Jazari, the father of robotics and mechanical engineering.

Look at Ibn Khaldun, the founder of sociology and historiography.

The advancement of science was driven by iconic polymaths, each contributing a distinct pillar to laboratory practice.

These polymaths were Jabir ibn Hayyan, al-Razi, al-Kindi, and ibn Sina.

Jabir ibn Hayyan, circa 721-815 CE, is commonly regarded as the father of chemistry.

Jabir prioritized absolute laboratory precision.

Alkindi, circa 801 to 873 CE.

applied chemical isolation directly to commerce medicine and consumer goods he wrote the book of the chemistry of perfume and distillations it contained more than 100 recipes for fragrant oils salves and aromatic waters he was one of the first major scholars to write scientific treaties refuting the alchemical myth that base metals could be magically transmuted into gold, arguing that chemical reactions could only create clever imitations, not true elemental changes.

Then, a little over 100 years later came Ibn Sina, and Ibn Sina cemented the scientific split between fraudulent gold making and real chemical therapy.

In his monumental The Canon of Medicine, he detailed how to distill essential oils and plant extracts to create standardized purified pharmaceuticals.

Aristotle, for instance, who made a special study of the digestion, died of a gastronomic malady.

Avicenna was a specialist of the heart, but he died of heart disease.

God is the great compassionate physician who alone has the power to give true healing.

All creatures are dependent upon God, however great may seem their knowledge, power, and independence.

The most famous philosophical fiction of subtraction would be Descartes meditations, right, where Through hyperbolic skepticism, the meditator brings himself back to absolute basics and tries to subtract away the world to reveal the condition for the appearance of the world as such, which is the so-called cogito.

I think the most interesting fiction of subtraction, and I think it's a fiction, a philosophical fiction of subtraction that Descartes read, certainly Hobbes read, and I have evidence to suggest that it was well known, is Ibn Sina, the 10th century Arabic and Persian philosopher who in his Kitab al-Shifa, The Book of the Cure and a number of other works develops this thought experiment with which I'm sure you're both familiar.

The Flying Man, right? And this is a philosophical thought experiment, right? A kind of radical thought experiment.

Some people think he wrote it while he was in prison.

He's incapable of opening his eyes.

He's incapable, you know, there's no touch, there's no sight, there's nothing.

And he asks, what does this man, what a man in such a position, of any awareness of his own existence? Would he be able to affirm his existence? And Ibn Sina says, well, yes, obviously he would.

Other people have disagreed.