Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.
Interpretation
Understanding the causes of illness and wellness is essential in medicine.
Avicenna emphasizes the importance of comprehending the underlying causes of both sickness and health in the field of medicine. This perspective encourages a holistic approach to healthcare where physicians not only treat symptoms but also seek to understand the root causes of ailments to promote true healing.
In practice
During a medical conference, a speaker quoted Avicenna to highlight the need for preventative measures in healthcare.
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.
Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?
As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.
An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
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.
From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.
In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.
The universe will finally become a ball of radiation, becoming more and more rarified and passing into longer and longer wave-lengths. The longest waves of radiation are Hertzian waves of the kind used in broadcasting. About every 1500 million years this ball of radio waves will double in diameter; and it will go on expanding in geometrical progression for ever. Perhaps then I may describe the end of the physical world as-one stupendous broadcast.
On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: βAn unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'β
The challenge of global warming should stimulate a whole raft of manifestly benign innovations - for conserving energy and generating it by 'clean' means (biofuels, innovative renewables, carbon sequestration, and nuclear fusion).
The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
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