Avicenna

Ibn Sina warns doctors against exploring the fundamental teachings of natural philosophy, not because they are irrelevant but because the physician should simply take them for granted. Thus in medicine one does not prove that there are four elements or four bodily humours that arise from them, but the doctor certainly needs to accept this, as so much therapy involves redressing imbalances in the humours. . . . The doctor should know about the internal senses but can get by with recognizing only three out of the five, since his goal of treating disease does not require him to distinguish between the two kinds of memory or to know at all about the estimative power.” But medicine does have scientific ambitions, viz, to pursue “demonstrative proofs” about the underlying causes of disease on the basis of sensory experience, a task that, for Avicenna, calls for “the method of experience as opposed to mere induction.” In this respect, medicine is similar to zoology, since the study of animals often involves inferences about imperceptible causes (Adamson, 60-61).