Avisena's Philosophy: A Brief History

Avisena would stay up late into the night making notes of arguments in syllogistic form. Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge had depicted perfect understanding as consisting of chains of syllogisms, tracing back to indubitable first principles. He coined a term for the special faculty by which gifted people like him are suddenly able to find the missing syllogistic link: Hads or Intuition. When Intuition did not come, he would often go to the mosque and pray to God for inspiration,. And when he grew tired with his nighttime study, he would drink wine to restore his strength.