Über den Ursprung der Wissenschaften

What it is

This is a scholarly edition of al-Farabi's short treatise on the classification of knowledge, published in 1916 by Clemens Baeumker with the Arabic text alongside a German translation. The scan is held by the Internet Archive.

Why it matters

The treatise organizes the branches of philosophical and scientific knowledge, showing how al-Farabi tried to systematically map human understanding. This kind of classification was influential for later medieval scholars, both in the Islamic world and in Europe, who used similar frameworks to organize learning.

Look closer

• Why might organizing knowledge into categories have been an important task for a medieval philosopher?
• What does the survival of this text in both Arabic and German tell you about how ideas crossed between cultures?
• What might be missing from a classification of "sciences" written over a thousand years ago?