The philosophy of Jabir İbn Hayyan

Jabir ibn Hayyan is a philosopher and a scientist/scholar who lived in two of the most important science centers of his time, Baghdad and Kufah, between 8th-9th centuries. Considering the time period he lived in, a great deal of Ancient and Medieval scientific heritage, especially philosophy was transferred into Islamic word of thought through translations. Jabir ibn Hayyan is not only a chemistry scholar but also he owns a systematical philosophy. When it is thought as a whole, we can see that Jabir was affected by Aristoteles in term of his understanding of science, experimental method and rational thinking. Jabir ibn Hayyan expressed opinions in very important fields of philosophy, hereby he set issues and studying fields for the next Islamic philosopher. In his philosophy, language has an important role both as epistemologically and ontologically. Besides that while handling ontology he adopts mostly Aristotelian metaphysics. He takes over philosophical instruments such as "potential-act/deed", "hyle", "matter-form/shape", "categories" and "non-moving mover" from Aristotelian metaphysics. Some Hermetic, Democritustic and Neoplatonist elements also accompany his philosophical manner. The most original aspect of Jabir ibn Hayyan's philosophy is the emphasis he puts on that the universe which is "divine creation" exists with a certain order. This is the "Balance Principle" of Jabir ibn Hayyan. According to this principle, everything that is sensual, emotional/sentimental, spiritual and rational has a numerical value and harmony and this numerical value can be discovered in the existence universe. With the help of these informations obtained from this discovery; objects can possible be transformed into each others and even a new object can be created from the beginning.