Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

Greek learning was preserved, and added to, and by a roundabout route–across north Africa and up through Spain, rather than directly through Byzantium and the Balkans–reached western Europe. The long-term effects of that transmission will emerge over the remaining chapters of this book, but two points are worth making here. The first is that Europe’s initial encounter with the Greeks, Aristotle in particular, but Plato and other authors also, was via Arab ‘re-elaborations’ rather than through direct transmission. For example, the logic, physics and metaphysics of Aristotle were studied either in translations from Arabic translations of the Greek originals, or in the works of Ibn Sina. This meant that, for a time at least, Greek philosophy was overlaid with the Islamic concern of trying to reconcile the Qur’an with rationalism, in particular Ibn Sina’s view that passages which did not agree with reason were to be understood allegorically. This had a profound influence on people like Thomas Aquinas and on interpretations of the Bible.