Author(s)

Marziyehsadat Montazeritabar^1,2, Zaiqing Fang¹

¹Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
²University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

One of the Muslim pioneers of the golden age of Islamic civilization is Jabir ibn Hayyan, polymath and alchemist of the eighth century CE. In this study, we briefly explain Jabir’s biography and the significance of his scientific character in the history of science. Then, we investigate Jabir’s attitude about the classification of science and the position of the study of nature in his thought. Jabir divides science into two main categories: the science of earth and the science of religion. He considers natural science as a type of rational science which is a subcategory of the science of religion. We discuss that the conceptual framework of Jabir in the classification of science has some similarities with other Muslim scholars.

Jabir Ibn Hayyan, Classification of Science, Study of Nature, Islamic Civilization

Montazeritabar, M. and Fang, Z. (2020) The Place of Study of Nature in Jabir Ibn Hayyan’s Classification of Science. Advances in Historical Studies, 9, 85-91. doi: 10.4236/ahs.2020.93007.