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Philipps-Universität Marburg
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Abstract
Background
Medieval scholars, both in the Islamicate and the Latin traditions, believed that in addition to the five “outer” or “external” senses (i.e., touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight), there also was a set of “inner” senses. This theory described how a number of faculties of the (animal) soul, that were localized in the ventricles of the brain, received, transformed and stored the sensory forms perceived by the outer senses. The development of the theory of Inner Senses in the Islamicate tradition, through reception and appropriation of its Greek heritage, has been deemed as one of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian faculty psychology. Furthermore, the idea of “ventricular” localization of the faculties of the soul has been the longest enduring answer to the question of the manner of the embodiment of these faculties within the Greco-Arabic tradition. The Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna (980-1037 CE) presented the most sophisticated and influential account of the theory of inner senses, at an intersection of philosophy and medicine.
Questions and Objectives
The following have been the three main questions that this study addresses:
1. What factors contributed to the endurance of the idea of ventricular localization of the faculties in the Greco-Arabic tradition?
2. Why did actors opt for the ‘ventricular’ account of the localization of brain functions?
3. To what extent were medicine and philosophy intertwined in the theory of inner senses?
This dissertation is dedicated to a deeper understanding of the medieval idea of (ventricular) localization of the inner senses. My point of departure is the localization of the inner senses and brain anatomy/physiology in the Avicennan corpus, and I situate the various aspect of the Avicennean theory of inner senses with regard to the Aristotelian, Galenic and Nemesian traditions. Apart from a comprehensive, close, emic (translation and) reading of the Avicennan corpus, this dissertation also occasionally goes back to the Greek tradition, and the Arabic tradition preceding Avicenna. This work also, then, partially deals with diachronic transfer and transformation of concepts and ideas from Greek into Arabic. This work problematizes the various entanglements of medicine and philosophy, anatomy and physiology, text and image in the Islamicate tradition and the Hellenic tradition that it inherited by virtue of the Abbasid Translation Movement.
Theoretical Approach, Sources and Method
I engage with these questions in terms of explicit textual knowledge of the faculties of the soul, the brain, and their relation, mainly in the Islamicate tradition, looking back to their preceding Greek tradition, and the transfer of concepts and ideas from the latter to the former. To study the entanglements of medicine and philosophy in the theory of inner senses, my point of departure has been two encyclopedic texts by Avicenna, one on medicine (al-Qānūn fī’ṭ-Ṭibb), one on philosophy (Kitāb aš-Šifāʾ). My methodological toolbox relies mainly on textual scholarship, augmented by transfer theory, translation theory, historical semantics, metaphor theory and Islamicate colicology, especially when I engage with the illustrations of the elements of the theory of inner senses in the Islamicate manuscript culture. With regard to perspective, I strive for an emic reading, translating and understanding of texts to the extent possible, especially in the case of brain anatomy where the risks of doing Whig historiography is higher.
Conclusions
In the knowledge-building process of the inner senses doctrine, medicine and philsophy were intricately intertwined. The antomy of the brain, its physiology, the conceptualization of the inner senses, and the tension between cardiocentrism and encephalocentrism are deeply entangled. Numerous factors contributed to the endurance of the idea of ventricular localization of the faculties in this process. I argue that the salience of the ventricles of the brain in several discourses was a significant one. The ventricles of the brain acted as conceptual nodes that fused together several discourses: they were loci for the localization of inner senses; they were crucial as the material underpinning of the pneumatic physiology of the brain, borth for the circulation of pneuma and its elaboration (or digestion) as a spatially extended entity; they could be regarded as numerable organs that could be hypotheically put in correspondence with functions, the dysfunction of which was speculatively observable. Furthermore, the superimposition of further ideas helped stabilize the idea of the ventricular localization of the inner senses: the juxtaposition of the front and the back of the brain as locations for “imagery” and “memory” consistent with the juxtaposition of sensation and locomotion; the conceptualization of the location of memory in correspondence with medicinal plants in use for memory. The localization of the faculty of estimation in the middle of the brain, in the vicinity of the structure known as the vermis also played a role. Visual representation of the ventricles was also easily possible using the conventions of illustrating anatomical structures using basic shapes, which resulted in a dialogue between text and image about the ventricles and the inner senses in the Islamicate tradition. In short, the ventricles were convenient concepts to engage with for actors involved in the processes of (textual/visual) transfer of knowledge.
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Dates
Created: 2025Issued: 2025-08-06Updated: 2025-08-06
Faculty
Fachbereich Pharmazie
Publisher
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Language
eng
Data types
DoctoralThesis
Keywords
Geschichte der AnatomieHistory of Islamicate Medicine and Pharmacymittelalterliche PsychologieMedieval PsychologyGeschichte der islamischen Medizin und PharmazieHistory of Anatomy
DFG-subjects
Inner SensesBrain AnatomyAvicennaGalenVentricular Localization
DDC-Numbers
615
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Irannejad, Shahrzad (0000-0002-2825-8885): The Localization of the Avicennan Inner Senses in the Galenic Brain. : Philipps-Universität Marburg 2025-08-06. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17192/z2025.0490.