Ibn e Sina’s Flying Man: a unique stroke of a genius mind
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Most of the textbooks on philosophy divide the entire history of philosophy into 3 main ages: the age of Greek Philosophy, the philosophy after the renaissance, and the dark ages. The rise of monotheism in Europe shifted the focus of Romans from philosophy to theology and the interest in the principles of Greek Philosophy particularly “truth at all costs” diminished and there was a period of scholastic(not to be confused with the scholastics) demise in the Roman Empire. However, during this age of darkness, there was one region in particular where the Greek philosophy not just prospered but got a rebirth i.e. 9th -11th century Baghdad. And to this rebirth of philosophy and reason, no other figure contributed more than Ibn-e-Sina (anglicized: Avicenna) so much so that the philosophy of the Golden Age of Islam can be divided into the philosophy before Avicenna and the Philosophy after Avicenna.
Avicenna was greatly inspired by the works of Aristotle and made a major effort to reconcile the philosophy and logic of Aristotle with his Gospel of Truth i.e. Islam. Most of the philosophy of the Middle ages focussed on the reconciliation of logic and philosophy with the axiomatic truths of monotheism, there was a little struggle for knowing the truth (independently) and very less originality. (Perhaps this is the reason that major historians generally don’t treat the philosophy of the Middle ages with the same deference as the Greek Philosophy or the philosophy after the renaissance.) But Avicenna did have a lot of his original ideas, he throughout his life, tried to validate Aristotle’s ideas. One such original Idea was “The Flying Man”. During the period of Aristotle, there were 2 different views on the Mind/Body problem:
Plato believed that the Mind and Body were 2 different entities. Mind is generally referred to as the soul. Plato, who presented the theory of forms, asserted that everything on earth is a caricature of some perfect form in the World of Forms and the soul was perfect/rational and chained to the body waiting to be released into the World of Forms. However, Aristotle argued that the soul and body were a single entity and there was no world of forms. This was just invented to categorize things.
Avicenna heavily objected to the views of Aristotle on the Mind/body problem and presented a thought experiment which he would call the permanent resolution to the Mind/Body Problem. This thought experiment was the “Flying Man Experiment”, which goes on as follows:
Imagine that one is born fully developed, in a perfect vacuum, suspended midway without any support. There is no light. The hands and limbs are suspended in a way that one can neither touch themselves nor feel anything else. Avicenna argued that such a man, would not be able to perceive any sensory data, but would he be aware of his own existence? Avicenna concluded that in such a condition, the flying man would have no idea if his body exists or not because he is getting no sensory information yet he would have a sense of awareness of his existence. This sense of awareness Avicenna attributed to the presence of the Soul(Mind), totally separate from the body.
This thought experiment was a stroke of genius and not only demonstrated the Islamic concept of the presence of the Soul but also corresponded with Plato’s concept of Soul. Based on this proof of the existence of a soul, Avicenna postulated that Soul is immaterial and exists eternally, so there must be someone who unifies the body and the soul at the time of the birth, this someone Avicenna declared as “God” or “a necessary existent” (a term taken directly from his different work). Avicenna through this thought experiment vindicated Plato’s ideas of forms that the forms are perfect and are never actualized in this world. Soul was the form and body was the shadow. Avicenna much like Aristotle believed that the sensory experience of the body/shadow added to the knowledge of the soul (as it strived towards perfection), knowledge was the greatest form of perfection, and once a person dies only the soul enters into the World of Forms due to the knowledge gathered through the sensory experience of the body. Since the world of forms is already perfect, there is no need for the sensory experience so he ultimately declared that resurrection of bodies was not logically possible and that the religious texts refer to the resurrection of souls, not the body. And that wherever resurrection of bodies is referred to in the text, it is meant in a metaphorical sense. This conclusion of Avicenna did not sit well with the clergy, so much so that al-Ghazali (who is the most influential figure of Islam after the Prophet(PBUH)) wrote an entire work to examine the incoherence of Avicenna and Aristotle’s claims (Title: The incoherence of philosophers) where he ultimately declared Avicenna as an infidel and atheist, only to be redeemed by Averroes (Ibn e Rushd) who wrote the text “The incoherence of the incoherence” (a rebuttal against al-Ghazalis’s The Incoherence of Philosophers). However, regarding his faith, Avicenna wrote that:
“It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic. No belief in religion is firmer than mine own. I am the unique person in the whole world. And if I am a heretic, then there is not a single Muslim anywhere in the world.”
Avicenna had to face a lot of opposition for his ideas but he was ultimately vindicated by history, and if it were not for the works of Avicenna, the West would never have gotten the “Commentator” i.e. Averroes to discover and understand “The First Teacher” or “ The Philosopher” i.e. Aristotle. Avicenna’s Flying Man experiment was so ingenious and ahead of its time that Rene Descartes came up (independently) with the greatest line in the history of philosophy i.e. “I think, therefore I am”, almost 7 centuries after Avicenna and if we examine Descartes’ conclusion, it can be found quite similar to Avicenna’s concept of self-awareness.
