Averroes (1126-1198) pushes even further the distinction between medicine and natural philosophy. In his Colliget, one of his rare medical works, he defines the discipline thus: ‘‘Medicine is an effective art, based on true principles and concerned with preserving man’s health and abating disease, as far as possible’’ (Colliget, I, 1). Comparing medicine with navigation or military affairs, he states explicitly that the ‘‘true principles’’ on which it must be established are those of natural philosophy. The two domains of knowledge are thus completely separate and placed in a clear and restrictive hierarchical relationship, since the doctor must, according to Averroes, deduce from the principles expounded by the philosopher the practical applications that he carries out. Where Avicenna affirms clearly the autonomy of medicine as a science, Averroes, who returns partially to al-Farabl’s solution by radicalizing it, makes medicine into a simple practical application of philosophical theories.
So, as a faithful Aristotelian, Averroes attacks Galen repeatedly, not hesitating to renounce established treatments for their theoretical incompatibility with natural philosophy, all the while trying to justify certain biological claims of the Stagirite. If we consider Avicenna’s an instrumentalist position, we can rightly call Averroes’ own a realist position insofar as it insists on the coherence between philosophical theories and their concrete medical applications; the definition of the Colliget emphasizes the fact that medicine cannot even aim for complete recovery but only try to do what is possible to help nature take its course. In this way, Averroes reinforces the importance of the prognostic art and of the pure practical art of the doctor, and limits drastically its theoretical pretensions. It is tempting to compare Averroes’ position on medicine to the one he adopts in his commentary on De caelo concerning Ptolemy’s theories; in fact, he does not hesitate to reject them despite their usefulness, as they seem to him not to comply with the Aristotelian philosophy that predicts uniquely circular movements for stars, when the Ptolemaic system, to save appearances, introduces a complex system of epicycles and eccentrics. In astronomy as in medicine, Averroes’ object is to make all knowledge coherent with Aristotelian philosophy, which is the only one to be authorized to research and expound truth.
World History
