Sauron

Wrong, for at least two reasons:

1. Ibn Nafis' comments on Galen's animal dissections appears only in ibn Nafis' preface to his work. His commentary on dissection of the heart is totally separated from his commentary on Galen. As Savage-Smith says:

With this quotation from Galen, which refers of course to the preparation of animal specimens, Ibn al-Nafi's ended the preface to his commentary on the anatomy in the Qanun. p.102

2. In his commentary about dissection of the heart, ibn Nafis was not correcting Galen at all. He was correcting Ibn Sina. Here is the full quotation on that topic:

He [Ibn Sina] said it has three ventricles, but this is not a true statement. Indeed, the heart has only two ventricles, one of them filled with blood, on the right side, and the other filled with pneuma, on the left. There is definitely no passage between these two, for otherwise the blood would pass to the place of the pneuma and would degrade its essence. And [furthermore] dissection (tashrih) refutes what they said, for the septum (hajiz) between the two ventricles much thicker than elsewhere. p. 102

The context of the quotation shows that it is.

Moreover, Savage-Smith says on page 104:

As can be seen from these selections from scholarly and medical writings, references to dissection, especially animal but also human, are to be found throughout the literature, though particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

(bolding added).

Bede

This is also true of Galen who never dissected people. Nor did Avisenna. Sauron, we agree there is no specific mention of human dissection happening in Islam. We disagree about what this means but my contention, that it didn't happen, remains well grounded because we have no specific evidence for it. You can disagree but until I see an Arab saying "I dissected a human" I will not be convinced. I remain open to seeing that evidence and it would help my basic case (that science and religion are not in conflict).

I'm preparing an article on dissection that will contain Christian references. For the moment, Park's article that I quoted from above remains your best bet. The only case she finds of church interference is of not boiling heads to show the bones of the ear as this is sinful.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Sauron

Perhaps. But the quote under examination is ibn Nafis. And the entry from his writing indicates that he did dissect a human being. In his rebuke of Abu Sina we see that ibn Nafis does not mention animals at all - which contrasts with his commentary on Galen in the preface, and his remarks elsewhere, where he does mention animals.

No, Bede. We do not agree on that. Why do you think I have been repeatedly dragging you back to the ibn Nafis entry?

Your contention is not well grounded at all, Bede. For at least three reasons:

1. Savage-Smith's quotations - remember her? The only expert here acknowledged by both sides? A contention that it did not happen -- i.e., your contention -- is a firm conclusion. Which, of course, flies in the face of what Savage-Smith clearly said: the evidence is not conclusive for a definite statement:

The evidence as to its actual practice, however, is conflicting and insufficient to allow one to draw definite conclusions.

So again I ask: When the recognized expert on this very specialized topic says quite clearly that no firm conclusions can be drawn, then by what stroke of arrogance do you think that you - a mere dilettante - can approach certainty on the question?

2. Savage-Smith also reminds the reader that the majority of the evidence has not even been analyzed yet.

At this point I must, however, insert a caveat. The medieval Arabic medical literature, not to mention the Persian and Turkish material, is vast, and no claims can be made for having examined even the majority of the texts, most of which still lie in manuscripts unedited and unpublished. Vaster still must be the legal/theological literature and the fatwa treatises containing legal responses to question of law, of which even less have been published or examined by scholars. Many lifetimes of scholarship will be required to survey all the potentially pertinent material.

A contention that it did not happen -- which is your contention -- would thus be based upon an examination of a minority of the evidence, and would obviously be premature and unfounded. Which, of course, is the opposite of being "well-grounded". You cannot have a "well grounded" statement based on only a minority of the evidence.

3. Your method of examining the topic and testing your conclusion rests upon a false belief that this practice would have been casually recorded. The social milieu of the times meant that the practice of dissection would have been frowned upon - a point that Savage-Smith makes clear, and that all parties in this debate stipulate to. So any doctor would have been careful not to indict himself by admitting to having performed a dissection, or recording that event in writing. But that means that the absence of written records is totally non-revealing, since an absence is what we would expect, given the social environment. "Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence" - I'm sure you're familiar with that maxim. So the fact that you haven't found a mountain of written references proves nothing at all, since this is the type of practice that wouldn't have been written down in the first place. It would have been transmitted by word of mouth and hinted at in shaded terms in the documentation. Which, ironically enough, is a pretty good description of what we see in the literature.

And as I just demonstrated, that particular evidentiary bar is not applicable, for several reasons:

1. Only a minority of texts have been examined;

2. Due to social pressures, it is highly unlikely that this practice would have been written down anyhow.

Bede

Sorry Sauron, I'm bored of this now.

The irony of your insisting there was more science under Islam than I do has not escaped me, but I fear I cannot believe it. Hopefully, the evidence will appear in the many texts as yet unexamined by scholars.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

GakuseiDon

Sauron, does ibn Nafis actually say that he performed a human dissection? Also, Savage-Smith (an acknowledged expert) says there is no firm evidence of human dissection, yet she refers to ibn Nafis - why isn't ibn Nafis's statement firm evidence for her, if it is so cut and dried?