In Book 4, The Alchemist by Kim Stanley Robinson, Khalid blames the Sufis for the halt of answers in the quest of knowledge. Khalid claims that “Islam was an intellectual discipline before the Sufis came along, studying the world as it is, we had Ibn Sina and Ibn Rashd and Ibn Khaldun and all the rest, and then the Sufis appeared and there hasn’t been a single Muslim philioshper or scholar since then who has advanced our understanding of things by a single whit (Robinson 260).” Ibn Sina appears to be a role model of some sort to Khalid; in which some of Khalid's teachings and theories may derive from.

According to Wikipedia:

Avicenna

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(Redirected from Ibn sina) Avicenna (latinized from Arab Ibn Sina; full name Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā al-Balkhī; Persian: ابوعلى سينا/پورسينا‎ ; arabicized أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن سينا; born 980, dead 1037) was a Persian [2][3] physician, philosopher, and a scientist. Avicenna, whose name means "the son of Sina", was a ethnic Persian. He was born in 980 (370 AH) in Afshana near Bukhara in Persia (now part of Uzbekistan) and died in 1037 (428 AH) in Hamadan (now in Iran).[1] Avicenna authored some 450 books on a wide range of subjects, many of which concentrated on philosophy and medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, which was for almost five centuries a standard medical text at many European universities. Avicenna's medical system was based on that of Galen which he combined with Aristotelian metaphysics as well as traditional Persian and Arab lore.

Works

Scarcely any member of the Muslim circle of the sciences, including theology, philology, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and music, was left untouched by the treatises of Avicenna. This vast quantity of works - be they full-blown treatises or opuscula - vary so much in style and content (if one were to compare between the 'ahd made with his disciple Bahmanyar to uphold philosophical integrity with the Provenance and Direction, for example) that Yahya (formerly Jean) Michot justifiably accused him of "neurological bipolarity". Avicenna wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but several others have been falsely attributed to him. His book on animals was translated by Michael Scot. His Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, and De Caelo, are treatises giving a synoptic view of Aristotelian doctrine, though the Metaphysics demonstrates a significant departure from the brand of Neoplatonism known as Aristotelianism in Avicenna's world; Arabic philosophers have hinted at the idea that Avicenna was attempting to "re-Aristotelianise" Muslim philosophy in its entirety, unlike his predecessors, who accepted the conflation of Platonic, Aristotelian, Neo- and Middle-Platonic works transmitted into the Muslim world. The Logic and Metaphysics have been printed more than once, the latter, e.g., at Venice in 1493, 1495, and 1546. Some of his shorter essays on medicine, logic, etc., take a poetical form (the poem on logic was published by Schmoelders in 1836). Two encyclopaedic treatises, dealing with philosophy, are often mentioned. The larger, Al-Shifa' (Sanatio), exists nearly complete in manuscript in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere; part of it on the De Anima appeared at Pavia (1490) as the Liber Sextus Naturalium, and the long account of Ibn Sina's philosophy given by Muhammad al-Shahrastani seems to be mainly an analysis, and in many places a reproduction, of the Al-Shifa'. A shorter form of the work is known as the An-najat (Liberatio). The Latin editions of part of these works have been modified by the corrections which the monastic editors confess that they applied. There is also a حكمت مشرقيه (hikmat-al-mashriqqiyya, in Latin Philosophia Orientalis), mentioned by Roger Bacon, and now lost, which according to Averroes was pantheistic in tone.

Legacy
George Sarton called Avicenna "the most famous scientist of Islam and one of the most famous of all races, places, and times." He was one of the Islamic world's leading writers in the field of medicine and followed the approach of Hippocrates and Galen. Along with Rhazes, Ibn Nafis, Al-Zahrawi and Al-Ibadi, he is considered an important compiler of Early Muslim medicine. He is remembered in Western history of medicine as a major historical figure who made fundamental contributions to medicine and the European reawakening.
In Iran, he is considered a national icon, and is often regarded as one of the greatest Persians to have ever lived. Many portraits and statues remain in Iran today. An impressive monument to the life and works of the man who is known as the 'doctor of doctors' still stands outside the Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris. There is also a crater on the moon named Avicenna.

From wikipedia article "Avicenna" accessed on February 20, 2007 (GNU Free Documentation License)