IBN BĀJJA ON MEDICINE AND MEDICAL EXPERIENCE

This article lists the medical works written by Ibn Bājja, overviews those that have come down to us and studies the super-commentary of Galen's commentary to Hippocrates'Aphorisms(Sharḥ fī al-Fuṣūl). This text shows a deep influence of al-Fārābī, namely in a conception of medical experience which stems from the latter's construal of experience (tajriba) as the inductive process described by Aristotle inPosterior Analyticswhich brings the premises of demonstration. On this basis, Ibn Bājja advocated for a less scholastic, more empiric medicine, and his claim was echoed by Ibn Rushd. There are some similarities between Ibn Bājja's text and Ibn Rushd'sK. al-Kulliyyāt fī al-ṭibbwhich suggest that the latter had readSharḥ fī al-Fuṣūl.This work gives moreover some evidence that human dissection could have been performed during Ibn Bājja's time.