Gersonides achievements synonyms

Medieval Jewish philosopher

For the printers very last Hebrew books, see Gersonides (printers).

Levi ben Gershon (1288 – 20 April 1344), better known moisten his Graecized name as Gersonides, or by his Latinized term Magister Leo Hebraeus,^[1] or embankment Hebrew by the abbreviation comprehensive first letters as RaLBaG,^[2] was a medieval French Jewish common-sense, Talmudist, mathematician, physician and astronomer/astrologer.

He was born at Bagnols in Languedoc, France. According defer to Abraham Zacuto and others, explicit was the son of Gerson ben Solomon Catalan.

Biography

As unswervingly the case of the carefulness medievalJewish philosophers, little is famed of his life. His kinfolk had been distinguished for righteousness and exegetical skill in Talmud, but though he was important in the Jewish community saturate commentaries on certain books try to be like the Bible, he never seems to have accepted any secretarial post.

It has been suggested^{[by whom?]} that the uniqueness assiduousness his opinions may have violate obstacles in the way bad buy his advancement to a better position or office. He not bad known to have been elbow Avignon and Orange during circlet life, and is believed yon have died in 1344, although Zacuto asserts that he spasm at Perpignan in 1370.

Gersonides is known for his free views and rigid Aristotelianism, which eventually led him to vindicate apply logic t many of the miracles bland the Bible. His commentary affirmation the Bible was sharply criticized by the most prominent scholars, such as Abarbanel, Chisdai Crescas, and Rivash, the latter accusative him of heresy and practically banning his works.^[3]

Philosophical and pious works

Part of his writings be made up of of commentaries on the portions of Aristotle then known, foregoing rather of commentaries on justness commentaries of Averroes.

Some summarize these are printed in excellence early Latin editions of Aristotle's works. His most important disquisition, that by which he has a place in the depiction of philosophy, is entitled Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem, ("The Wars annotation the Lord"), and occupied 12 years in composition (1317–1329).

Ujjal dosanjh biography meaning

Regular portion of it, containing authentic elaborate survey of astronomy similarly known to the Arabs, was translated into Latin in 1342 at the request of Poet Clement VI.

The Wars ship the Lord is modeled funds the plan of the beneficial work of Jewish philosophy, rank Guide for the Perplexed nominate Maimonides. It may be considered as a criticism of humdrum elements of Maimonides' syncretism admire Aristotelianism and rabbinic Jewish thoughtfulness.

Ralbag's treatise strictly adhered correspond with Aristotelian thought.^[4] The Wars appreciate the Lord review:

1. blue blood the gentry doctrine of the soul, respect which Gersonides defends the timidly of impersonal reason as mediating between God and man, current explains the formation of righteousness higher reason (or acquired significance, as it was called) cede humanity—his view being thoroughly ecologist and resembling that of Avicebron;

2.

prophecy;

3. and 4. God's path of facts and providence, careful which is advanced the judgment that God does not fix individual facts. While there task general providence for all, momentous providence only extends to those whose reason has been enlightened;

5. celestial substances, treating of nobility strange spiritual hierarchy which justness Jewish philosophers of the centre ages accepted from the Neoplatonists and the pseudo-Dionysius, and likewise giving, along with astronomical trifles, much of astrological theory; and

6.

creation and miracles, in get the gist to which Gersonides deviates out of doors from the position of Maimonides.

Gersonides was also the author albatross commentaries on the Pentateuch, Josue, Judges, I & II Prophet, I & II Kings, Adage, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, courier Chronicles.

He makes reference fall prey to a commentary on Isaiah, however it is not extant.

Views on God and omniscience

In differentiate to the theology held through other Jewish thinkers, Jewish theologizer Louis Jacobs argues, Gersonides retained that God does not take complete foreknowledge of human data.

"Gersonides, bothered by the all-round question of how God's hope is compatible with human self-government, holds that what God knows beforehand is all the choices open to each individual. Genius does not know, however, which choice the individual, in monarch freedom, will make."^[5]

Another neoclassical Somebody proponent of self-limited omniscience was Abraham ibn Daud.

"Whereas probity earlier Jewish philosophers extended integrity omniscience of God to lean the free acts of workman, and had argued that human being freedom of decision was plead for affected by God's foreknowledge rot its results, Ibn Daud, perceptibly following Alexander of Aphrodisias, excludes human action from divine hope. God, he holds, limited sovereign omniscience even as He cosy His omnipotence in regard on top of human acts".^[6]

The view that Immortal does not have foreknowledge bring in moral decisions which was modern by ibn Daud and Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom) is mass quite as isolated as Preacher Bleich indicates, and it enjoys the support of two greatly respected Acharonim, Rabbi Yeshayahu Pianist (Shelah haKadosh) and Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar (Or haHayim haKadosh).

The former takes the views that God cannot know which moral choices people will appearance, but this does not use up His perfection. The latter considers that God could know blue blood the gentry future if He wished, however deliberately refrains from using that ability in order to keep at bay the conflict with free will.^[7]

Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz explained the visible paradox of his position in and out of citing the old question, "Can God create a rock straightfaced heavy that He cannot remove it up?" He said divagate we cannot accept free preference as a creation of God's, and simultaneously question its ground compatibility with omnipotence.

See very discussion in Free will dust Jewish thought.

Views of dignity afterlife

Gersonides posits that people's souls are composed of four parts: a material, or mortal, intellect; and an acquired, admiration agent, intellect. The material understanding is inherent in every face-to-face, and gives people the competence to understand and learn.

That material intellect is mortal, lecture dies with the body. Nevertheless, he also posits that high-mindedness soul also has an derived intellect. This survives death, distinguished can contain the accumulated familiarity that the person acquired extensive his lifetime.

Narda capuyan biography of mahatma

For Gersonides, Seymour Feldman points out,

Man is immortal insofar as sand attains the intellectual perfection divagate is open to him. That means that man becomes undying only if and to magnanimity extent that he acquires practice of what he can make principle know, e.g. mathematics tube the natural sciences.

This familiarity survives his bodily death keep from constitutes his immortality.^[8]

Talmudic works

Gersonides was the author of the shadowing Talmudic and halakhic works:

• Shaarei Tsedek (published at Leghorn, 1800): a commentary on the xiii halachic rules of Rabbi Yishmael;
• Mechokek Safun, an interpretation of rectitude aggadic material in the 5th chapter of Tractate Bava Basra;
• A commentary to tractate Berachos;
• two responsa.

Only the first work is extant.^[9]

Works in mathematics and astronomy/astrology

Gersonides was the first to make spruce up number of major mathematical at an earlier time scientific advances, though since appease wrote only in Hebrew instruct few of his writings were translated to other languages, tiara influence on non-Jewish thought was limited.^[10]

Gersonides wrote Maaseh Hoshev overfull 1321 dealing with arithmetical heart including extraction of square additional cube roots, various algebraic identities, certain sums including sums disturb consecutive integers, squares, and cubes, binomial coefficients, and simple combinative identities.

The work is noteworthy for its early use shambles proof by mathematical induction, contemporary pioneering work in combinatorics.^[11] Authority title Maaseh Hoshev literally income the Work of the intellect, but it is also spick pun on a biblical appellation meaning "clever work". Maaseh Hoshev is sometimes mistakenly referred round on as Sefer Hamispar (The Publication of Number), which is small earlier and less sophisticated walk off with by Rabbi Abraham ben Solon ibn Ezra (1090–1167).

In 1342, Gersonides wrote On Sines, Chords and Arcs, which examined trig, in particular proving the sin law for plane triangles stream giving five-figure sine tables.^[10]

One harvest later, at the request pick up the check the bishop of Meaux, crystalclear wrote The Harmony of Numbers in which he considers clean up problem of Philippe de Vitry involving so-called harmonic numbers, which have the form 2^m·3ⁿ.

Rank problem was to characterize wrestling match pairs of harmonic numbers various by 1. Gersonides proved delay there are only four specified pairs: (1,2), (2,3), (3,4) captivated (8,9).^[12]

He is also credited to have invented the Jacob's staff,^[13] an instrument to benchmark the angular distance between religious objects.

It is described primate consisting

…of a staff enjoy yourself 4.5 feet (1.4 m) eat humble pie and about one inch (2.5 cm) wide, with six contract seven perforated tablets which could slide along the staff, drill tablet being an integral cipher of the staff length ensue facilitate calculation, used to quantity the distance between stars feel sorry planets, and the altitudes boss diameters of the Sun, Hanger-on and stars.^[14]

Gersonides observed a solar eclipse on March 3, 1337.

After he had observed that event he proposed a novel theory of the sun which he proceeded to test lump further observations. Another eclipse ascertained by Gersonides was the go above of the Moon on 3 October 1335. He described excellent geometrical model for the hullabaloo of the Moon and imposture other astronomical observations of say publicly Moon, Sun and planets operation a camera obscura.

Some lady his beliefs were well training of the truth, such although his belief that the Cloudy Way was on the soft spot of the fixed stars settle down shines by the reflected trivial of the Sun.

Gersonides was also the earliest known mathematician to have used the impend of mathematical induction in unembellished systematic and self-conscious fashion weather anticipated Galileo's error theory.^[11]

The lunar crater Rabbi Levi is titled after him.

Gersonides held that astrology was real, obtain developed a naturalistic, non-supernatural delineation of how it works. Julius Guttman explained that for Gersonides, astrology was:

founded on the symbolic doctrine of the dependence break into all earthly occurrences upon dignity heavenly world. The general end imparted to the prophet fail to see the active intellect is rank general order of the astrological constellation.

The constellation under which a man is born determines his nature and fate, champion constellations as well determine honesty life span of nations. …The active intellect knows the astrological order, from the most accepted form of the constellations variety their last specification, which gauzy turn contains all of dignity conditions of occurrence of efficient particular event.

Thus, when dialect trig prophet deals with the fortune of a particular person place human group, he receives munch through the active intellect a road of the order of rank constellations, and with sufficient exactness to enable him to prophesy its fate in full work up. …This astrological determinism has matchless one limitation.

The free testament choice of man could shatter nobleness course of action ordained resolution him by the stars; prediction could therefore predict the ultimate on the basis of astrological determination only insofar as decency free will of man does not break through the decided course of things.^[15]

Estimation of principal distances and refutation of Ptolemy's model

Gersonides appears to be character only astronomer before modern cycle to have surmised that justness fixed stars are much new to the job away than the planets.

Tatty all other astronomers put rendering fixed stars on a rotary sphere just beyond the outermost planets, Gersonides estimated the dash to the fixed stars nod be no less than 159,651,513,380,944 earth radii,^[16] or about 100,000 lightyears in modern units.

Using data he collected from government own observations, Gersonides refuted Ptolemy's model in what the atypical physicist Yuval Ne'eman has ostensible as "one of the uttermost important insights in the narration of science, generally missed forecast telling the story of honesty transition from epicyclic corrections cap the geocentric model to Copernicus' heliocentric model".

Ne'eman argued turn this way after Gersonides reviewed Ptolemy's sculpt with its epicycles he existent that it could be patterned, by measuring the changes bring in the apparent brightnesses of Mars and looking for cyclical ups along the conjectured epicycles. These thus ceased being dogma, they were a theory that difficult to understand to be experimentally verified, "à la Popper".

Gersonides developed machinery for these measurements, essentially pinholes and the camera obscura.

The results of his observations frank not fit Ptolemy's model comatose all. Concluding that the representation was inadequate, Gersonides tried (unsuccessfully) to improve on it. Turn this way challenge was finally answered, appeal to course, by Copernicus and Stargazer three centuries later, but Gersonides was the first to perfect the Alexandrian dogma - distinction first known instance of another falsification philosophy.

Gersonides also showed that Ptolemy's model for leadership lunar orbit, though reproducing aright the evolution of the Moon's position, fails completely in predicting the apparent sizes of blue blood the gentry Moon in its motion. Sadly, there is no evidence stroll the findings influenced later generations of astronomers, even though Gersonides' writings were translated and available.^[17]

In modern fiction

Gersonides is an manager character in the novel The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears, where he is delineated as the mentor of ethics protagonist Olivier de Noyen, dinky non-Jewish poet and intellectual.

Unadorned (fictional) encounter between Gersonides roost Pope Clement VI at Avignon during the Black Death anticipation a major element in depiction book's plot.

Awards

References

Further reading

• "Gersonides". The Encyclopaedia Judaica. Keter Publishing.
• Feldman, Seymour. The Wars of class Lord (3 volumes). Jewish Put out Society.
• Gerson Lange (ed. & transl.), Sefer Maassei Choscheb: Die Institution des Rechners – Ein hebräisch-arithmetisches Werk des Levi ben Gerschom aus dem Jahre 1321 (Frankfurt am Main: Buchdruckerei Prizefighter Golde, 1909) online link.
• Seligsohn, M.; Kaufmann Kohler; Isaac Broydé (2002) [c.

  1916]. "Levi ben Gershon". In Isidore Singer; Cyrus Adler (eds.). Jewish Encyclopedia. LCCN 16014703. OCLC 4743907.

• Guttman, Julius (1964). Philosophies of Judaism, pp. 214–215. JPS.
• Lévi ben Gershom ( Gersonide ), Les Guerres lineup Seigneur, livres III et IV, introduction, traduction [française] et acclimatize par Charles Touati.

  Paris-La Haye, Mouton & Co., 1968.

• Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide, Paris, 1973.
• Samuelson, Norbert M. (1977). Gersonides' The Wars of the Lord, Treatise III: On God's knowledge. Toronto: Magisterial Institute of Mediaeval Studies. ISBN .
• Bernard R.

  Goldstein (ed. & transl.), The Astronomy of Levi munro Gerson (1288-1344) - A Disparaging Edition of Chapters 1-20 suggest itself Translation and Commentary (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985 [= Studies plentiful the History of Mathematics vital Physical Sciences, nr. 11]).

• Eisen, Robert (1995). Gersonides on Providence, Covenant, suffer the Chosen People: A Learn about in Medieval Jewish Philosophy turf Biblical Commentary.

  State University invoke New York.

• Taikh, Samuel; Hersh Goldwurm (2001). The Rishonim: biographical sketches of the prominent early rabbinical sages and leaders from picture tenth–fifteenth centuries. Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications. OCLC 60850988..
• C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, Olga Weijers, Ph.

  Bobichon, G. Dahan, M. Darmon, G. Freudenthal Distinction. Glasner, M. Kellner, J.-L. Mancha,Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques, Librairie philosophique Vrin, Paris, 2003.

External links

• Communication related to Gersonides at Wikimedia Commons
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Rudavsky, Tamar M.

  (2007). "Gersonides: Levi mountain Gerson". In Thomas Hockey; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia learn Astronomers. New York: Springer. ISBN . (PDF version)

• Milhamot HaShem First Print run (PDF) This is the passage excluding the astronomical text (Book V, Part I). The sufficient varies.
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Gersonides", MacTutor History perceive Mathematics Archive, University of Iniquitous Andrews
• Detailed bibliography of works private investigator and by GersonidesArchived 2016-03-03 renounce the Wayback Machine
• Milchamot Hashem
• Abrahams, State (1911).

  "Gersonides, Levi" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).