NEW SOLIDARITY

December 22, 1980 Page 4

Paris Conference Celebrates 1000 Years Of Ibn Sina's Thought

by Mary Brannan
A conference held last weekend in Paris on the millennium of the great Islamic scientist ibn Sina (Avicenna), "The Fight for Progress and Science,'' provoked an uproar rarely seen among French and Middle Eastern political and intellectual circles. In the days preceding the conference, newspaper headlines told of "Polemics around Avicenna Conference." Several scheduled conference participants hastily withdrewincluding one who falsely announced in the pages of the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde that the conference had been postponedand others were severely pressured not to take part. This unsuccessful attempt to disrupt the ibn Sina conference, conducted by the Khomeiniite Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and their European cothinkers in the Second International, displayed their fear of the power of ideas to strengthen and animate a republican leadership in its battle for scientific-progress and economic development. These were the goals for which ibn Sina fought, and he is a worthy object for the fears of today's proponents of an Iran-style new dark age. Born in 980, and living in the area which is now Afghanistan and Iran, ibn Sina, both as a thinker and a political leader, was the outstanding figure in the Arab Renaissance. His writings on science, philosophy, and medicine preserved and developed the Platonic epistemology, the science of how human mind works, and sparked the Italian renaissance which revived civilization in the modern world. The continuing significance of ibn Sina's ideas for science today in the fight against irrationalism and academic sterility was the theme of the conference, sponsored by the Executive Intelligence Review and the Humanist Academy on Dec. 12 and 13. Attending were 150 French and Middle Eastern intellectuals, political figures, engineers, scientists and students, including representatives of several embassies, and Dr. Osmond Bakar of the University of Malaysia, which is planning a July 1981 conference on ibn Sina. Journalists representing the gamut of news media

Conference participants from left to right Sophie Tanapura, Professor Aly Mazaheri, Philip Golub, and EIR editor Criton Zoakos.

NSIPS/Nora Hamerman

from the French and German national wire services, the major Paris dailies, to Kuwaiti and Saudi newspapers covered the conference. As Criton Zoakos, editor-in-chief of the Executive Intelligence Review explained to the conference, "Ibn Sina is not dead! Some people like him refuse to die! People are their ideas, and ibn Sina's ideas are very much alive today. Those who tried to stop the conference were trying to kill ibn Sina's ideasand therefore trying to commit homicide in the most precise sense of the word!" Zoakos's keynote address, on ibn Sina's conception of the Necessary Existent, explained how the method of ibn Sina is essential for the solution of the scientific problems facing us today, notably in the field of fusion energy. Solving these problems is crucial, said Zoakos, for if they are not resolved. "We shall see the degeneration of the social order, leading to a possible thermonuclear war."

The key conceptual difficulty in fusion power, said Zoakos, is the problem of the "field-particle paradox." This problem, which takes the form: Do the elementary particles exist as primary elements, or is the real existent the geometry of dynamic relationships which defines the "particles"? can be solved by using the epistemological method of ibn Sina. Zoakos explained that "ibn Sina divided the world into two domains: the ephemeral and the eternal. This is the first statement of relativistic physics." Ibn Sina defined a material object as "a specific organization of spacea remarkably accurate description of an electron," Zoakos noted. "The task facing political leaders today," said Zoakos, "is to advance man's understanding of nature, and especially of energy." The mastering of fusion energy and its unlimited resources is impossible, Zoakos stressed, "unless scientists begin to understand the method of ibn Sina." 'Man's Identity Is Reason' In particular, he said, "they must understand ibn Sina's essential contribution to epistemology: that the human mind must first develop a consciousness of itself. The act of knowledge involves three elements: the Knower, the Known, and Knowledge, and when man examines himself as the object of Knowledge, the Knower and the object of Knowledge become one. In that way, individual human beings understand that 'I am Knower, the Known, and Knowledge.' The individual's very identity becomes Knowledge. It is this knowledge which makes man different from other species. And it is this sense of identity as Knowledge which societies must be organized to fulfill in human beings. Man must find a sense of identity as Reason." Bringing ibn Sina's conception of Reason as the identity of mankind to bear on the crisis in the Middle East today, Zoakos concluded that "The body of knowledge contributed by ibn Sina belongs to the domain of the eternal. The future of his ideas is secure. The question facing us, is what is going to happen to the nations of the Middle East and Europe? If those nations fail to master and advance the ideas of ibn Sina they will suffer." If they succeed, Zoakos assured, "nations will flourish and civilization will outshine the grandeur of the Islamic Renaissance of the Middle Ages." The discussion following Zoakos's presentation focused on the content of scientific policy.

NSIPS/Nora Hamerman

Zoakos outlined the future as planned by the Club of Rome, which calls for the reduction of the world's population to 1 billion through famine, plague, and war by the year 2000. Zoakos challenged the audience, saying that it is up to them, to scientists, to stop the starvation of millions of people, and gave as a graphic example of the implementation of Club of Rome policy the devastation of Cambodia under the Pol Pot butchers. When Zoakos added that this is precisely what is taking place in Iran, a storm of protest arose from some in the audience. "The Iranian model cannot be judged by any standard other than its own," one declared. Zoakos responded to the apologist for genocide and feudalism with the moral judgement of ibn Sina, himself the greatest Iranian in history. "Ibn Sina wrote that there is one higher universal Reason which subordinates all others, andunless Khomeini wants to declare ibn Sina wrong and [medieval Islamic bestialist] alGhazali rightYou are wrong when you say that the Iranian Revolution can be judged on the basis of any other Reason than mine." Cities and Self-Perfection Professor Aly Mazaheri, a historian and teacher at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Science Social (School of Advanced Studies in Social Science) in Paris, outlined the thought of ibn Sina's cothinker al-Farabi on the state.

Describing al-Farabi's book on the Virtuous Citybetter translated, said Mazaheri, as The Scientific City,he said that al-Farabi described cities, a concept equivalent for all modern intents and purposes to the state, as the necessary condition for human development. Man can perfect himself only in a city, al-Farabi said, because only the city offers mankind the social conditions requisite to scientific development. This principle of scientific inquiry applies equally to the government of cities, which should be composed of directorates of several people, through whose ongoing dialogue wisdom can be increased. Al Farabi said that the more a state advances toward perfectiontoward industrialization, Mazaheri specifiedand wisdom, the stronger it would grow. Al-Farabi stressed that the citizens, not only the rulers, must be educated in wisdom, and denounced cities where religious dictatorships prevented the increase and spread of knowledge.

The tenth-century philosopher of the Islamic world, ibn Sinaconference participants found his ideas indispensable in 1980.

Following Prof. Mazaheri's speech, the discussion once again returned to the underlying theme of universal Reason, and again drew the wrath of cultural relativists and pluralists in the audience. "If you say that there is one superior philosophy," said one participant, "this is tyranny!"

Again using ibn Sina's method, Zoakos responded: "The reason why you are putting forward this argument is to convince me that there is not one Reason but that there are many reasons. However, if you succeed in convincing me, then there is universal agreement, and therefore one universal Reason! "Reason has no need to impose itself with tyranny; only unreason needs to resort to violence. If societies fail to regenerate the faith of their citizens in Reason, then they will collapse into a miasma of unreason, violence, and tryanny," concluded Zoakos. Ibn Sina's Influence in Europe Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, of the Humanist Academy and leader of the European Labor Party in Germany, was to have addressed the conference Dec. 13 on ibn Sina's influence in Europe. However, as Zoakos explained, threats against her had made her attendance impossible. "We have made many enemies because of our achievements," said Mr. Zoakos, highlighting especially the highly successful symposium on the great German poet Friedrich Schiller, which was held two weeks before the ibn Sina conference in Mannheim, West Germany. The Schiller conference, said Zoakos, "caused an earthquake" by its revival of Schiller's commitment to science and progress. Zoakos named some of those who had tried to destroy the ibn Sina conference, including some United Nations and UNESCO-Related circles, and circles associated with French Socialist Party leader Francois Mitterrand. In Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche's absence, Zoakos presented the conclusions of her study. Shortly after ibn Sina's death, his works were translated into Latin and widely circulated throughout Europe. Among those influenced by his ideas were Pope Sylvester II, known as "the Pope with the Arab spirit," Roger Bacon, and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. Bacon promoted study of ibn Sina and founded an Avicennian faction among scholars in Paris. In his Opus Maius, he calls for scientific development and an ecumenical approach, both hallmarks of ibn Sina. Cusa's concept of the "Non-Other," discovered Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche, is identical to ibn Sina's Necessary Existent. Following ibn Sina, Cusa demonstrates that the laws governing the human mind are identical to the laws governing material processes in the universe. The invariant in the life of the universe is the succession

of moments of transformation from one domain of lawfulness to higher laws. This principle of the lawful creation and development of the universe through successive, nonlinear "leaps" to higher levels of lawfulness, a conception shared by ibn Sina and developed by Cusa, is equivalent to the most advanced conception in modern science, negentropy. The question of political program is also answered by Cusa, who said that each individual must act to fulfill his creative potential, and that harmony between states and individuals can only be achieved when both are committed to the development of creativity. This is precisely the way ibn Sina's ideas must be pursued today, concluded Zoakos. "When people like Sartre are accepted as intellectuals" said Zoakos, "then we are really oppressed! There could be nothing more exciting, however, than having three and a half billion bubbling, excited developing minds around us!" The final presentation was made by Ezzar Rastkar, an expert on Iranian poetry and former professor of methodology at the University of Teheran, who outlined the traditional themes of Persian mysticism, the cult of Mithra, and the influence of ibn Sina's father, a member of the so-called Egyptian school, on his son. Rastkar debunked those who claim that ibn Sina was in any way an Aristotelian, pointed to his attacks on Aristotle. Zoakos commented that wherever influence his father and the Mithra cult might have had on the young ibn Sina, ibn Sina's own search for the cause of things can alone explain his thought. He identified the ultimate cause of all things, the Necessary Existent, and made his own sense of identity the Necessary Existent. Toward the end of the conference, a questioner asked, "What contemporary philosopher has the closest links to ibn Sina?" Prof. Mazaheri answered: "In this critical moment in the battle against an encroaching new dark age, we will need Plato and ibn Sina more than ever. I want to name Lyndon LaRouche the front-line fighter and the guide for us all. He is a fighting philosopher and a standard bearer for us all." LaRouche has identified his scientific and political method with the Platonic humanist tradition, in which he has called ibn Sina an outstanding figure. The Executive Intelligence Review and the Humanist Academy have announced plans to organize future conferences on ibn Sina and other great humanists, to raise the level of debate in today's scientific and intellectual communities and to provide the basis for a scientific and intellectual renaissance in the 1980s.