Though much has been written of late about Averroes and his philosophy, little attention has been paid to his political teaching. Generally speaking, his works can be divided into two categories: (a) commentaries on Aristotle and other important thinkers and (b) occasional treatises written to resolve particular questions. The subject of this essay, his political teaching, is stated most directly in the first classification of writings – especially in his commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric and Plato's Republic. Even though the second kind of writings helps to nuance some of his broader themes — especially the two treatises having to do with the relationship between philosophy anddivine law, namely, the Decisive Treatise and its sequel Kashf an manāhij al-adilla — considerations of space preclude an analysis of them here. Our examination of the first two writings will focus primarily on what Averroes has to say about the different kinds of political regimes and, above all, the best regime, for his discussion of it leads him to reflect more generally on other major political questions.

Quand on compare l'Optique d'Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) à celle de Ptolémée, on rencontre des innovations à coup sûr capitales, et qui chacune mériterait une analyse particulière: étude expérimentale de la propagation rectiligne de la lumière, nouvelle théorie de la vision fondée sur la réception dans l'œil de rayons lumineux, recherche du lien entre l'anatomie de 1'œil et sa fonction optique, preuve expérimentale que la réfraction joue un rôle important dans la vision, et j'en passe: les dimensions d'un article de revue n'y suffiraient pas. Aussi bien mon but est-il plus global et plus synthétique. Il consiste à tenter de faire le point sur ce qu'est devenue, après Ibn al-Haytham, l'insertion de l'optique dans le système des savoirs qui lui sont connectès, en comparant cette insertion à ce qu'elle était au temps de Ptolémée, c'est-à-dire dans l'œuvre de référence (plus encore que celle d'Euclide et du pseudo-Euclide) reçae et travaillée par lui.

As early as the ninth century, Muslim astronomers started refining the Ptolemaic astronomy which, by this time, had been fully adopted as the framework of their research. Already, in the early part of this century, refinements were based on improved observational techniques, and included a variety of phenomena such as the length of the seasons, the solar equation, mean motion parameters, and many others.

The classical theory of errors can be divided into stochastic and determinate parts, or branches. The birth of the first of therse became inevitable after Bradley's idea of cultivating astronomy and natural science in general by “regular series of observations and experiments” became universally accepted. Such scholars as Lambert, Simpson, Lagrange, Daniel Bernoulli and Euler were responsible for the development of the stochastic theory of errors while Laplace and Gauss completed its construction. About fifty or sixty years ago it was included into mathematical statistics.