Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition : Science, Logic, Epistemology and Their Interactions

the demise of the logical positivism programme. The answers given to these qu- tions have deepened the already existing gap between philosophy and the history and practice of science. While the positivists argued for a spontaneous, steady and continuous growth of scientific knowledge the post-positivists make a strong case for a fundamental discontinuity in the development of science which can only be explained by extrascientific factors. The political, social and cultural environment, the argument goes on, determine both the questions and the terms in which they should be answered. Accordingly, the sociological and historical interpretation - volves in fact two kinds of discontinuity which are closely related: the discontinuity of science as such and the discontinuity of the more inclusive political and social context of its development. More precisely it explains the discontinuity of the former by the discontinuity of the latter subordinating in effect the history of science to the wider political and social history. The underlying idea is that each historical and - cial context generates scientific and philosophical questions of its own. From this point of view the question surrounding the nature of knowledge and its development are entirely new topics typical of the twentieth-century social context reflecting both the level and the scale of the development of science.

From the reviews:

“This volume is full of such thought-provoking nuggets, and it will certainly make an enjoyable reading to philosophers, historians of philosophy, philosophers of science, historians of Islamic/Arabic culture, grammarians, belletrists, and certainly practicing scientists who wish to take a deep breath, away from their exhausting work at their laboratories, and stop to think of what they were doing.” (George Saliba, Metascience, Vol. 21, 2012)

"This is an impressive contribution both to the history of science and to the history of philosophy... Even for those who are not working in the history of science or philosophy the book is immensely appealing. Just to give an example, I was struck by the link between lemmata and middle terms . I will start by studying the chapter on Self-awareness and knowing that one knows and move next to Avicenna's naturalized epistemology. The whole book is relevant to contemporary philosophical issues. The account of the notion of "tropos" is a case in point." Paul Gochet, Pôle de Logique, Université de Liege, Belgium