Number and Quantity Perception from Mathematical to Metaphysics in the context of Avicenna and Ikhwan al-Safa

Abstract

The issue of number and quantity is the most fundamental subject of the philosophy of mathematics, which has been discussed for thousands of years and is still not fully defined. In this article, the thoughts of two major schools of philosophy such as the Ikhni-i Safa community and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) on the concepts of number and quantity were examined in Islamic philos-ophy. The Ikhwan-al-Safa, who was deeply influenced by the Pythagorean doc-trine, considered the numbers as the basic principle of everything and the Py-thagorean understanding with the Ikhwan became a part of the understanding of Islam. On the other hand, Avicenna who adhered to Aristotle tradition dis-cussed the concepts of continuous and discrete quantity in the context of cate-gories and in the context of the principle of independence of the types.