Quote by Ibn Tufayl: “A human being left to pure nature will arrive at the truth by reason alone.”

Ibn Tufayl imagined a child raised alone on an island with no society, no teachers, and no religious instruction — and concluded that through observation and reason alone, that child would reach fundamental truths about nature and the divine. It is a radical argument for the power of the unaided human mind.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan was composed in 12th-century Andalusia under the Almohad dynasty, a regime of strict religious orthodoxy that suppressed philosophical speculation. Ibn Tufayl's text navigated this constraint by couching radical philosophical arguments in an apparently fictional narrative, exploring how a mind without society could arrive at divine knowledge.

Andalusian philosopher and physician born around 1105 in Guadix in present-day Spain, best known for the philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan — the first philosophical novel in world literature — which explores how a person raised alone on an island could arrive at truth through pure reason.