Abstract
In his commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād, ʿAlī Qūshjī (d. 879/1474) took several radical positions. One notable argument was his insistence that astronomy did not need Aristotelian natural philosophy. Because of this stance, in conjunction with his agreement with Ṭūsī that there were no valid empirical proofs for the Earth’s state of rest, Qūshjī concluded that “nothing fallacious follows” from the assumption of a rotating Earth. In the following generation, ʿAbd al-ʿAlī al-Bīrjandī (fl. 913/1507) was intent on refuting Qūshjī, both regarding the rejection of Aristotelian natural philosophy and the unprovability of the Earth’s state of rest. To do this, Bīrjandī, in his commentary on Ṭūsī’s al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa, presents a vigorous defense of the need for Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics for the practitioners of astronomy. In so doing, he affirms Ṭūsī’s position that one could justifiably prove the Earth’s immobility using natural philosophy since empirical proofs were lacking. Bīrjandī’s extended discussion is quite cogent and contains a number of interesting ideas, including the proposal of what can arguably be called “circular inertia” if the Earth were indeed rotating.
Keywords
Qūshjī Ṭūsī Bīrjandī Shīrāzī hayʾa natural philosophy Earth’s motion innī/limmīShare
Details
- Authors: F. Jamil Ragep, Prof., McGill University
- DOI: dx.doi.org/10.12658/Nazariyat.10.2.M0239en
- Page: 105-153
- Other Languages:
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Türkçe
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