Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera

Shem-Tov ben Joseph ibn Falaquera, also spelled Palquera, was a Spanish Jewish philosopher, poet, and commentator. A vast body of work is attributed to Falaquera, including encyclopedias of Arabic and Greek philosophies, maqamas, some 20,000 poetic verses, and commentaries on Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. The common theme in Falaquera’s writing was to encourage observant Jews to study philosophy and to appreciate the harmony that existed between Torah and rational truth learned in philosophy. While Falaquera did not advocate teaching the secrets of science and divine sciences to every man, he did advocate the teaching of these truths to a broader range of educated Jewish males than previous proponents of rationalist thinking. He authored a Medieval Hebrew philosophical-scientific encyclopedia, De'ot ha-Filosofim, which consists of a detailed theoretical, and not merely descriptive, treatment of zoology, botany and mineralogy, comparable to that of Albertus Magnus.