Abstract

Psychology gained its status as a science in 1879. But it has a deep history before that. When analysing the literature on the history of psychology, an approach is seen accepting that psychology was totally shaped by Western philosophers and scientists. However, Islamic philosophers of the middle ages had very important and comprehensive ideas about the psychology that they called “Ilm al-Nafs”. Unfortunately, these philosophers‟ views regarding psychology are not known very well. The history of Islamic thinking‟s focusing on sensation, perception and thinking dates back to the 8th century, when the Islamic society had met philosophy. Especially the traces of Aristotle on Islamic philosophy have been extensive. For this reason, Aristotle is called "Muallim-i Evvel (First Teacher)"; and Farabi, who is the most important one of the greatest thinkers of Islamic philosophy, is called "Muallim-i Sani" (second teacher). Islamic civilization, which took over the Greek and Hellenistic philosophy and science tradition; have understood Plato's views on the soul through dialogues, such as Phaidon, Timaios and Politeia, translated into Arabic in the 9th century, and Aristotle's views on psychology with his book De Anima, by translating it into Arabic as "Kitab Al-Nafs" (Book of Soul). In addition, they have known Aristotle's other short writings, compiled under the title of Parva Naturalia, in the field of psychology, through translations called "al-His ve‟l-Mahsus" (De Sensu et Sensato – On Sense and the Sensible). Islamic philosophy, which met with De Anima together with the annotation of Alexander of Aphrodisias, had produced views on the origin of the knowledge and mind-body interaction. Aristotle had addressed the issue of how information is formed and how the mechanism called "reason" works. And this issue had already occupied an important space in peripatetic philosophy. Almost all philosophers in the historical development starting from Theofrastos to Averroes (Ibn Rushd), had regarded reason as a passive function of the soul and had argued that the human wisdom was insufficient in producing knowledge by itself. In this context, the debate on how the knowledge was to be obtained, which had started in Ancient philosophy, seems to have extended into the philosophy of Islam. In the discussion of; “whether the sensations and experiences or the reason is effective in obtaining the knowledge”, it is seen that the Islamic philosophy have stood on the side of the reason, which means the rationalist side. Additionally, Islamic philosophy has also focused in a serious manner into the discussion of mind-body dilemma, which had been introduced to the philosophy world by Descartes, that this discussion have also been known as the discussion that led to the foundation of the philosophy. In this context, Ibn Sînâ (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) are particularly prominent. Ibn Sînâ, had carried a psychophysical parallelism approach, arguing that body and soul do not interact with each other; while Ibn Rushd had suggested that the soul and body interact with each other, with a psychophysical interactionist approach. On the other hand, Ibn al-Haytham has an important place in terms of psychology; regarding his ideas about sight, sensation and perception. He falsified a theory of sight called "Emission Theory", which had gained recognition before him, and put forward a theory that is also accepted in modern science. Depending on this ideas, the study will investigate the contributions of Islamic philosophers of the middle ages to the history of science and psychology.