Contribution made by Avempace

Avempace (Abû Bakr Muḥammad Ibn Yaḥyà ibn aṣ-Ṣâ’igh at-Tûjîbî Ibn Bâjja al-Tujibi) born at Saragossa near the end of the eleventh century was celebrated as a physician, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. He died in Fez in 1138.

Avempace developed the concept that there is always a reaction force for every force exerted. This theory is a precursor of Newton’s law of universal gravitation.

Avempace assumed that all motion is fundamentally regular, orderly, and consistent, which directly contradicted Aristotle’s observation that motion is a kind of change.

About 1118 he wrote at Seville, a number of logical treatises. He wrote several smaller treatises, among were Logical Tractates, a work on the soul, another on the conduct of the solitary, also on the union of the universal intellect with man, and a farewell letter; to these may be added commentaries on the Physics, Meteorology and other works of Aristotle related to physical science.

Avempace’s theory regarding the relationship between light and color marks a break with the thesis commonly held that the effect of light on a transparent medium can be produce only in so far as the latter is transparent in actuality.

For Avempace, light is already a sort of color, any effect produced by the color on the transparent medium is equivalent precisely to the actualization of this transparency as such.
Contribution made by Avempace