Abu Nasr al-Farabi · Philosophy

The Second Teacher: Ordering All Knowledge

Why the Islamic world crowned al-Farabi <em>al-Mu&rsquo;allim al-Thani</em>, &lsquo;the Second Teacher,&rsquo; after Aristotle the First: he recovered, ordered, and transmitted the whole Greek philosophical inheritance into Arabic, and in the <em>Enumeration of the Sciences</em> drew a single map of all knowledge, from language and logic up to metaphysics and politics.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that al-Farabi earned the title &lsquo;Second Teacher&rsquo; by systematizing and transmitting Greek philosophy into Arabic, and that his Enumeration of the Sciences mapped every science - language, logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, and civil science - into a single ladder, with logic as the instru…

Leads to Aristotle.

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