2008062. Ljubovic. 06_Conclusion. Proef 4. 18-8-2008:14.44, page 193.

CONCLUSION

From its beginning to the era of modern logic, the history of logic has always been the best indicator of the eternal scientific value and signif- icance of Aristotle’s Organon, a “tool” without which today it is impos- sible to imagine the further development of philosophy, science and civilization in general. On the other hand, it is also an indicator of how firm the foundations of Organon are, despite its evident deficiencies that Aristotle himself was aware of. In spite of all the criticism by the new non-Aristotelian system of logic, Aristotle’s “analytic” has not lost its basic practical and scientific value. The reception of Aristotle’s Organon among Arabs was an impetus for the development of philosophy and science, but, as Windelband says, this meant that “the Greek culture came out from its national closure and stepped into the great collective movement by which the peoples of the Old Age, inhabiting the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, exchanging and uniforming their ideas, was transformed into a reciprocal spiritual life.” The history of logic acknowledges the main timeframe of its so called “Arabic period” from the first translations of Aristotle’s works into Ara- bic to when European philosophers and logicians (1150–1250) became familiar with the works of al-Far¯ ab¯ ¯ı, Ibn-S¯ına¯ (Avicenna) and Ibn-Ruˇsd (Averroës) and with, until then, unknown to Aristotle’s works—“Logica nova” (The New Logic). The contribution and the importance of Ara- bic logic is great, not only for its part in “keeping from sinking into oblivion” and its role as a “transmitter”, but also for its thought pro- voking commentaries and interpretations of Aristotle’s works and the works of other thinkers, as well as elaborating, completing and incor- porating into the logical opus a number of extra-Aristotelian topics, the creation of logical terminology, etc., which left a deep and lasting trace in the medieval Western European, Renaissance, and even later philos- ophy. On top of that, there are the works of the most important Ara- bic philosophers and logicians inspired by Hellenism, characterized by strong rationalistic tendencies in a broader sense. Their psychology was characterized by an inclination for the empiric (rational empiricism), in which the experiment, as one of the basic methods of research, plays 2008062. Ljubovic. 06_Conclusion. Proef 4. 18-8-2008:14.44, page 194.

194 conclusion

a special part. All that inspired R. Bacon (1214–1294), an admirer of empiricism, to say in his review of the history of philosophy (Opus Majus) that Avicenna was “dux et princeps philosophiae”;1 and the strong nat- uralistic and rationalistic traits inspired Engels to point out “… while among the Latins a cheerful spirit of free thought, taken over from the Arabs and nourished by the newly-discovered Greek philosophy, took root more and more and prepared the way for the materialism of the eighteenth century”2 in his Dialectics of Nature, seeing the 18th century as “the greatest progressive movement experienced by the mankind by then”. The period beginning from the late 13th or early 14th century is often seen by historians of Arabic philosophy as a period of decadence, when philosophy in general lost its value and the continuity of philo- sophical thinking began to weaken. In scientific literature, this evaluation of the state of philosophy is commonly referred to logic as well, which was allegedly in its final phase at that time, a phase of decay in which it faded away as a dis- cipline. However, in spite of the fact that the Arabic Aristotelianism, “whose naturalistic consequences at the beginning seemed to try to strengthen the rationalistic spirit to a victorious unruliness”,3 did not fulfill its expectations, it came up with a form of survival within the realm of thought, within the science of shapes and the laws of reason- ing and the method of scientific cognition. In addition to that, although belonging to the circle of so called “foreign sciences” which were seen as outside the scope of the “Islamic sciences” by their origin, subjects and methods and disciplines which were exposed to attacks from con- servative circles that feared for the religious discipline, logic managed to keep its place within the system of oriental sciences and preserved its autonomy. Even at the time when the creativeness of the classical Arabic period was inherited by the nations of Ottoman Empire and on new territory, logic was in a similar situation. The beginning of the 16th century, when the first Bosniac authors came onto the scene, was a very difficult period, but the logicians still persisted in their atti- tude that it was a discipline which explained the skill of reasoning and

1 The “Opus Majus” of Roger Bacon, Vol. III: Fratris Rogeri Bacon, Ordinis mino- rom—Opus Majus. Pars prima—Capitulum VI, p. 14,Oxford,1900. (Reprint: Elibon Cllasic) 2 Fridrih Engels, Dialectics of Nature. Introduction [Friedrich Engels, Dialektik der Na- tur. Einleitung], Prosveta—BIGZ, Beograd, 1978,p.10. 3 Wilhelm Windelband, Povijest filozofije,I,p.360.