ABSTRACT
Among the writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), the Kitāb al-Ḥayawān or Book of Animals uniquely combines natural philosophy and medicine, a theoretical science and a practical discipline. The resulting method of inquiry is based on direct observation of animals’ bodily features. According to Avicenna’s logical writings, the methodic (or regulated) experience (tajriba) that zoology seems to require consists not of isolated perceptive acts but of repeated observations, producing valid knowledge under certain, stipulated conditions. This method proves extremely fruitful in zoology, especially when direct inspection or analogical reasoning are not viable epistemic approaches to understanding the nature and function of animals’ bodily parts because these are not immediately visible or are insufficiently similar to human bodily parts, the touchstone in comparative anatomy. Tajriba, a term adopted by the Arabic translator of Aristotle’s zoological writings, favors inferences from behavior to anatomy, and consequently to physiology, which allow the inquirer to establish the nature and function of animal parts. This chapter examines such inferences in the case of fish, how methodic experience promotes them, and the role of Greek-to-Arabic translation in elaborating the method of zoology.
