Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.
AvicennaRead
Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Understanding the origins and context of knowledge is essential for complete comprehension.
Avicenna's quote emphasizes the importance of comprehending not only the causes and beginnings of knowledge but also its accompanying details and accidents. This suggests that true understanding of any subject requires a thorough investigation into its foundational elements and the context in which it exists, highlighting a critical aspect of philosophical inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.
Themes
KnowledgeUnderstandingCausesBeginningsPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on epistemology, you could introduce this quote to stress the importance of foundational studies in knowledge acquisition.
More from Avicenna
All quotes →Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?
AvicennaRead
As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.
AvicennaRead
An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
AvicennaRead
It is in the nature of water ... to become transformed into earth through a predominating earthy virtue; ... it is in the nature of earth to become transformed into water through a predominating aqueous virtue.
AvicennaRead
Similar quotes
There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
Haruki MurakamiRead
Woe to him who doesn't know how to wear his mask, be he king or pope!
Luigi PirandelloRead
I will tell you what is my overriding perception of the last twenty years: that we are a civilization careening toward a succession of anticlimaxes – toward an infinity of unsatisfying, and disagreeable endings.
John IrvingRead
A good End cannot sanctify evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.
William PennRead
Why should death make a man truthful, or even clever? The dead are likely dull fellows, full of tedious complaints - the ground's too cold, my gravestone should be larger, why does he get more worms than I do.
George R. R. MartinRead
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead