134 CHAPTER FIVE
Maimonides’s source for his taxonomy of medicine may well have been
Farabi’s Encyclopedia of the sciences (Ihsa al-ulum), which Maimo-
nides may have read in a fuller recension than the one known to us.^44
Whatever his source may have been, however, the division of medicine
into regulated parts is in line with the technical image of medicine. In his
Epistle on Medicine Farabi refers to medicine as “a practical art” (sinaa
faila)^45 rather than as a “science” (ilm or marifa).
For Farabi, each science has its practical and theoretical branches, but
only the theoretical can be properly called “science.” In Farabi’s defi nition,
“A multitude of separate things becomes an art^46 or is included in an art
when it is summarized in rules that are imprinted in the person’s mind in
a specifi c order; for example, orthography, medicine, agriculture, con-
struction, and other arts, (regardless of) whether they are practical or
theoretical.”^47 Relying again on Farabi, Maimonides emphasizes the ex-
perimental (and therefore uncertain) character of the art of medicine.
Unlike true science, where, given correct premises and correct reasoning,
one can attain certain knowledge, in the art of medicine a correct treat-
ment does not guarantee the expected result.
Abu Nasr al- Farabi has mentioned [in this connection] that, in the
art of medicine, in seamanship, and in agriculture, the outcome does
not necessarily depend upon the efforts invested. For the physician
may do what ever is necessary in the best possible way, without any
error committed either by him or by the patient, yet he may not at-
tain the cure which is the ultimate goal. The reason for this is clear,
for the active factor in us is not medicine alone, but medicine and
nature.^48Medicine, however, is not only different from hard science, but also from
other arts:
For the art of medicine is not like the craft of carpentry or weaving,
which can be learnt through observation and can be mastered throughPupils to Richard Walzer on his Seventieth Birthday (Oxford, 1972), 310:4– 5. For the
medieval Hebrew translation of this text, see S. Muntner, Maimonides’ Medical Writings
(Jerusalem, 1961), 3:8– 10.
(^44) As suggested by M. Steinschneider, Al-Farabi, des arabischen Philosophen Leben und
Schriften (Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de Saint- Pétersbourg, VIle série,
t. 13, 4; 1869), 248b– 249a; idem, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters, 293;
and see S. Stroumsa, “Al- Farabi and Maimonides on Medicine as a Science,” Arabic Sci-
ences and Philosophy 3 (1993): 235– 49.
(^45) Plessner, “Al- Farabi’s Introduction to the Study of Medicine,” 312.
(^46) Lit.: arts, sanai.
(^47) Al-Farabi,Ihsa al-ulum, ed. Uthman Amin (Cairo, 1939), 45; and see also 106:1.
(^48) Bos,Maimonides on Asthma, 84.