Some Arabic Technical Terms of Syllogistic Logic and Their Greek Originals

Some Arabic Technical Terms of Syllogistic Logic and Their Greek Originals Nicholas Rescher Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 82, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1962), pp. 203-204. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0279%28196204%2F06%2982%3A2%3C203%3ASATTOS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R Journal of the American Oriental Society is currently published by American Oriental Society.

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BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS Some Arabic Technical Terms of Syllogistic Logic and Their Greek Originals a technical innovation of Alexander of AphroWe shall be concerned with the meaning in disias to represent the relationship of two stateArabic logical texts of three technical terms of ments so linked by a common term as to be syllogistic logic : qarinah (" connection ") , jcimi'ah capable of serving together as premisses of a (" union "), and san'ah (" construction ") . None (categorical) ~yllogisrn.~ of these words are treated satisfactorily in even the specialized lexicons of philosophical Arabic.l Par- (2) jcimi'ah = Greek symplokd = Medieval Latin (from the Arabic) complicatio. This is a ticular interest and importance attaches to the second technical innovation of Alexander, repthird of these terms. resenting the relationship of three categorical The ideas involved are briefly treated in the statements so linked by an appropriate overlap section (fasl) on " analytics" of the chapter (bcib) in their terms as to be capable of constituting on logic of the pioneering encyclopedia Keys to the two premisses and the conclusion of a the Sciences (Mafdtih al-'ulSm) of the Persian ~yllogism.~ scholar l\l*ammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwiirizmi (3) san'ah = Greek technd = Medieval Latin (from (d. c. 995 A. D.) .2 Here we read : the Arabic) ars or also pacto. This is a techal-qarinah al-muqaddamatdni idha jumi'atcini * nical innovation of Galen (most likely) to al-jami'ah fi-'1-qarinah wa-'1-natijah idha jurepresent the abstract geometric pattern of mi'atdn wa-yusammi aiddn al-san'ah * wa'smihd occurrence of the terms of a syllogism into bi-'1-ytindniyyah stiltijismtis ai al-qiyds * what modern syllogistic logic calls a "figure." (Van lote en's edition, Page 147, lines 7-9; my (This, of course. is not the same as the stops.) ~ristdtelian schdka, Arabic shakl, which is " A ' connection ' (qarinah) exists when two conceived of in terms of the comprehension premisses are united [sc. by a common, i. e. middle terml. A 'union' (icimi'ah) exists "ee Georges - Volait, Die Stellung des Alexander von * in a 'connection 7 and the conclusion when they Aphrodisias xur Aristotelischen Schlusslehre (Halle, 1907, Inaugural Dissertation, Universitat Bonn), and are united [syllogistically in their terms], and also I. hl. Bochenski, A History of Formal Logic (Notre it is also called a 'construction' (san'ah). I t s Dame, 1961), p. 137. name in Greek is stilzijismSs, i.e., syllogism." See Volait, Z O C . cit. I n Galen's register of his logical works in his treatise Read in the wider light of the usage of these De ordine librorum suorum (vol. 19 of G. K. Kiihn's technical terms in other Arabic logical texts, this edition of Galen's Opera Ommia) we find the titles of passage from al-Khwiirizmi serves as basis for the several treatises about such technai, e. g., peri ton en tais technais koindn kai ididn, and peri t8s t6n techndn follow in^ explanations : systaseds ("On what is common and different among (1) qarinah = Greek syzygk = Medieval Latin technai," " On the structure of technai " ) . (from the Arabic) conjungatio. This term is Similarly we find among the treatises of al-F&r&bia \

*Sf. Horten, Die Spekulative und Positive Theologie des Islams (Leipzig, 1912) ; A. M. Goichon, Lexique de la Langue Philosophique d'lbn Sind (Paris, 1938). Miss Goichon gives a n adequate explanation of only the first of our terms: qarinah (p. 303). For al-Khwarizmi and his work see C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur, vol. I (Weimar, 1898), p. 244; and Supplementband I (Leiden, 1937), pp. 434-435. Al-Khw&rizmi's encyclopedia was edited by G . Van Vloten: Liber Mafdtih al-Olum, Lugduni-Batavorum ( 1895). See also the writer's annotated translation, "The Logic-Chapter of Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khw&rizmi's Encyclopedia, Keys to the Sciences (c. 980 A. D . ) " in the Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 44 (1962).

work entitled Kitdb i h ~ d 'al-qaddyd wa-'1-qiyasdt allati tasta'milu f i jami sanci'i' al-qiyasiyyah ( " Book of enumeration of the propositions and arguments ( o r ' syllogisms') which are used in all of the syllogistic t e c h n a i " ) . (Sef pp. 29, 214 and 220 of M. Steinschneider's classic monograph, " Al-Farabi," Mkmoires de I'Acade'mie Impkriale des Sciences de S t . Pktersbourg, VIIe Serie, tome 13, no. 4 [St. Petersbourg, 18691.) I t is possible that this is ( i n p a r t ? ) identical with a work published and translated by Prof. D. M. Dunlop, " Al-Fiiriibi's Eisagoge," The Islamic Quarterly, vol. 3 (1956), pp. 117-138. For information regarding the traditions about Galen's fourth syllogistic figure see Prantl, Geschichte der Logilc i m Abendlande, vol. I (Leipzig, 1955), pp. 570577.

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relations among the terms, not their formal geometric pattern of occurrence. I n this Aristotelian sense of "figure " there are of course only three, but in Galen's geometric-pattern sense there are four svllo~istic " figures.") " " d

This third correspondence is of particular interest. Galen's technical usage of technd seemed to have eluded the Greek lexicographers, just as the co~res~onding sense of Pn'ah eluded their Arabic This has proved troublesome to modern scholar^.^ I n the middle For a n excellent discussion of the issues involved in the differences between Aristotle's and Galen's concept of " figure " see Paul Henle's study " On the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism," Philosophy of Bcience, vol. 16 ( 1 9 4 9 ) , pp. 94-104. The reason for the obscurity of this technical use of technE in logic is its short-lived currency. After its employment by Galen, the later writers returned to the classical sch8ma to refer to the " figures " of syllogistic logic, but Galen's way of conceiving of this was no natural that i t became predominant although his special terminology was abandoned. See H. Stephanus, Thesaurus Craecae Linguae, vol. 8 (sigma-tau), col's 2109-2113; and Liddell-Scott GreekE n g l i s h Lexicon (New edition by H. S. Jones), vol. 11, p. 1785. I t has the highly important consequence that if we wish to examine Galen's claim to invention of the fourth " figure," we can discount any evidence to the effect that he said there were but three sch8mata; i t is the number of technai he claimed that is crucial. This consideration puts most recent discussions of the matter beside the point. I plan to devote a special publication to these matters.

of a list of titles of his logical works, drawn up by Galen himself, occurs the title ''peri ti% tdn techndn systaseds " which Hunain ibn Ishaq properly rendered: "fi qawdm al-sana'i'at," i.e. " On the structure of ' constructions '." lo But Kiihn, Galen's editor, renders the Greek as "De artium constitutione ,, and Bergstr5sser follows suit by rendering the Arabic as "Ueber den (zu) stand der Kiinste.,, l2 I cannot guess how these scholars accountf or the presence of a treatise on the state of the arts in Galen's listing of his logical writings.l3 NICHOLASRESCHER * C"'"ERSITY

OF 'ITTSBURGH

C. G. Kiihn, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, vol. 19 (Leipzig, 1830), pp. 43-44 ( i n GalEnou peri tEs taxgos t 6 n idi6n b i b l i b n ) . Gotthelf Bergstrasser, " Hunain ibn Ishaq ueber die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Uebersetzungen," A b handdungen fiir die K u n d e des Y o r g a n l a n d e s , vol. 17 ( 1 9 2 5 ) , no. 2, p. 47 (line 1 3 ) of the Arabic text. Op. cit., pp. 45-56. I t is true that the Medieval translators of logical texts frequently rendered Arabic gan'ah as Latin ars. See, for example, the extracts from Averroes quoted on pp. 47-51 of Steinschneider's monograph of 1869 on al-F8rabi. l2 Op. cit., p. 39 (no. 1 1 7 ) . l 3 C. Prantl solved the problem by omitting this work from his roster of Galen's logical writings. See his Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, vol. I (Leipzig, 1855), pp. 560-561. *This paper is part of a series of studies of Arabic logic supported a grant from the National Science Foundation, which the author acknowledges gratefully.

Transcription of Arabic Letters in Geometrical Figures I n an effort to avoid the tedious diacritical The transcription has been selected so that on marks in the reproduction of geometrical figures the one hand i t follows the medieval translations and formulae of Arabic astronomy and mathe- as closely as possible and, on the other hand, is not matics and to make possible an unequivocal co- too far from the transcriptions adopted universally ordination of the letters used, the undersigned by western writers. All students interested in have decided to use henceforward the following Arabic mathematics are invited to adopt the above transcription : b j d h w z 1 ; 1 t y k l n z n s ' f s q r s h A B G D E W Z H T Y K L M N S O F C Q R X The remaining Arabic letters are relatively rare in geometrical figures : therefore a convention uDon their transcription has not yet been made. u

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transcription in order that the confusion which has existed until now will come to an end.

H. HERSIELINK M~NCHEN

E. S. KENNEDY BEIRUT