Student Excerpts: Intuition by Avicenna

The following passage came from the homework of student, Ann Neadermann in Norway. I thought it was a wonderful description of Avicenna's views and intuition in general:

Ann Neaderman
Unit Four
Medicine of Avicenna

11. How does Avicenna define intuition? Do you think he believes in using it in healing a patient?

It receives the essences of universal things in so far as they are universal. The perfection of this power is to become an intellect in act. The first way is called reasoning, while the second is called intuition. Yet intuition can be very powerful or weak or mediocre.If the speculative intellect reaches this perfection by having present the first and derived intelligible principles, and these are there actually and in full view without being absent, then the derived principles are related to the first as "light upon light"; this is the acquired intellect, because it derives from both kinds of principles. The soul has mastery of intelligible principles and is able to recall them whenever it wants without effort or assistance, that power is called the intellect in act, and this is the "lamp" that it makes use of whenever it wants. You must know the difference between reasoning and intuition.

Great Supplemental Resource in ARABIC

Dear Members,

A student shared this website with me earlier this week. I know some of you were asking about resources you could read or listen to in Arabic - this looks like a good one. If this resource is not useful for you, you can just ignore this message.

I thought you might like to read about Dr. Jameel el-Deweik al-Qudsi (currently working from Jordan) if you have not yet heard about him. He is specialized in Quranic and Prophetic medicine and sells DVD sets (only in Arabic unfortunately) of his major work in herbal and nutritional quranic medicine.

Here is the site: http://www.dr-jameel.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Best regards,
Muhammad Mansour