Q0568

“Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of…” — Avicenna (The Canon of Medicine, Opening)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: The Canon of Medicine, Opening. Theme: nature.

English

Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and restored.
Thinker Avicenna
School Islamic Philosophy
Source The Canon of Medicine, Opening
Theme Nature
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to The Canon of Medicine, Opening and files it under Islamic Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Avicenna

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna, 980–1037) wrote The Healing and The Canon of Medicine, dominating Islamic and later Latin curricula. Born near Bukhara, he synthesized Aristotelian and Neoplatonic themes into a system centered on the Necessary Existent and an immortal rational soul.

How to read this passage

Nature may mean physical cosmos, living world, human nature, or a normative standard of what ought to be. Presocratics, Daoists, Stoics, and modern environmental thinkers share the word while disagreeing about its force. This passage enters that discussion through nature.

Concepts in this quote

Nature
Philosophy quotes about nature ask what the cosmos is, how humans belong in it, and whether “natural” can guide ethics or politics.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Avicenna. (n.d.). Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and restored. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0568

MLA: Avicenna. “Medicine is the science by which we learn….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0568.

Chicago: Avicenna. “Medicine is the science by which we learn….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0568.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “Medicine is the science by which we learn…”?

The passage is attributed to Avicenna, The Canon of Medicine, Opening. The archive attributes this English wording to The Canon of Medicine, Opening and files it under Islamic Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Avicenna mean by nature?

Nature may mean physical cosmos, living world, human nature, or a normative standard of what ought to be. Presocratics, Daoists, Stoics, and modern environmental thinkers share the word while disagreeing about its force. This passage enters that discussion through nature.

Same thinker

More from Avicenna

  1. Suppose a person were created at once, fully mature, but with sight veiled and limbs outstretched so that he touched nothing; he would affirm his own existence without affirming any body.
  2. The Necessary Existent has no cause; rather, It is the cause of all that is possible.
  3. The knowledge of anything that has causes is not complete unless it is known through its causes.
  4. The soul is a substance; it is not a body, nor is it impressed in a body as a form in matter in the way of bodily forms.
  5. The first of intelligibles is the grasp of existence; from it the mind proceeds to the necessary and the possible.

All quotations by Avicenna

Same theme

More on nature

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the nature theme