““Al-Kind¯ı (ca. 800 – ca. 870), the first to develop philosophical thought as such in Arabic, was a polymath in the translated sciences and very much a product of his age. Like other scientists of his time, he gathered around him a wide circle of individuals capable of advising him on various issues and translating the relevant texts. He commissioned translations of scientific subjects and he himself wrote on all the sciences: astrology, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, and medicine – he even has a treatise on swords.36 This broad and synoptic view of all sciences, along with the spirit of encyclopedism fostered by the translation movement for the half century before his time, led him to an overarching vision of the unity and interrelatedness of all knowledge. At the same time, and as a result of this view, he developed a unitary epistemological approach – namely, that of mathematics. His goal became to approach mathematical accuracy in his argumentation; influenced by both Ptolemy and Euclid, he held mathematical or geometrical proof to be of the highest order””
