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AVICENNA'S THEORY OF PRIMARY MIXTURE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

ABRAHAM D. STONE
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Cruz, Cowell Academic Services, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA Email: abestone@ucsc.edu

Abstract

Ancient Peripatetics and Neoplatonists had great difficulty coming up with a consistent, interpretatively reasonable, and empirically adequate Aristotelian theory of complete mixture or complexion. I explain some of the main problems, with special attention to authors with whom Avicenna was familiar. I then show how Avicenna used a new doctrine of the occultness of substantial form (whose roots are found in Alfarabi) to address these problems. The result was in some respects an improvement, but it also gave rise to a new set of problems, which were later to prove fateful in the history of early modern philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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