NOTICE

All files on this site have been moved to http://www.wikilivres.ca. All future contributions to Wikilivres should be made there.

This site will be closed on June 6th, 2012.

Free texts and images.

16. To refute the philosophical theory that the souls of the heavens observe all the particular events of this world

The Incoherence of the Incoherence ~ About the Natural Sciences written by Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, translated by Simon van den Bergh

The First Discussion

1954.

Ghazali says:

The so-called natural sciences are many, and we shall enumerate their parts, in order to make it known that the Holy Law does not ask one to contest and refute them, except in certain points we shall mention. ‘ They are divided into principal classes and subdivisions The principal classes are eight. In the first class are treated the divisibility, movement, and change which affect body in so far as it is body, and the relations and consequences of movement like time, space, and void, ‘ and all this is contained in Aristotle’s Physics. The second treats of the disposition of the parts of the elements of the world, namely heaven and the four elements which are within the sphere of the moon, and their natures and the cause of the disposition of each of them in a definite place; and this is contained in Aristotle’s De coelo. The third treats of the conditions of generation and corruption, of equivocal generation and of sexual generation, of growth and decay, of transmutations, and how the species are conserved, whereas the individuals perish through the two heavenly movements (westwards and eastwards), and this is contained in De generatione et corruptione. The fourth treats of the conditions which are found in the four elements through their mixture, by which there occur meteorological phenomena like clouds and rain and thunder, lightning, the halo round the moon, the rainbow, thunderbolts, winds, and earthquakes. The fifth treats of mineralogy, the sixth of botany. The seventh treats of zoology, which is contained in the book Historia animalium. The eighth treats of the soul of animals and the perceptive faculties, and says that the soul of man does not die through the death of his body but that it is a spiritual substance for which annihilation is impossible.

The subdivisions are seven: The first is medicine, whose end is the knowledge of the principles of the human body and its conditions of health and illness, their causes and symptoms, so that illness may be expelled and health preserved. The second, judicial astrology, which conjectures from the aspects and configuration of the stars the conditions which will be found in the world and in the State and the consequences of dates of births and of years. The third is physiognomy, which infers character from the external appearance.‘ The fourth is dream-interpretation, which infers what the soul has witnessed of the world of the occult from dream images, for the imaginative faculty imagines this symbolically. The fifth is the telesmatical art, that is the combination of celestial virtues with some earthly so as to constitute a power which can perform marvellous acts in the earthly world . The sixth is the art of incantation, which is the mixing of the virtues of earthly substances to produce marvellous things from them. ‘ The seventh is alchemy, whose aim is to change the properties of minerals so that finally gold and silver are produced by a kind of magic. , And there is no need to be opposed to any of these sciences by reason of the Divine Law; we dissent from the philosophers in all these sciences in regard to four points only.

I say:

As to his enumeration of the eight kinds of physical science, this is exact according to the doctrine of Aristotle. But his enumeration of the subdivisions is not correct. Medicine is not one of the natural sciences, but is a practical science which takes its principles from physical science; for physical science is theoretical and medicine is practical, and when we study a problem common to theoretical science and practical we can regard it from two points of view; for instance, in our study of health and illness the student of physics observes health and nature as kinds of natural existents, whereas the physician studies them with the intention of preserving the one, health, and keeping down the other, illness. Neither does judicial astrology belong to physical science; it is only a prognostication of future events, and is of the same type as augury and vaticination. Physiognomy is also of the same kind, except that its object is occult things in the present, not in the future. , The interpretation of dreams too is a prognosticating science, and this type belongs neither to the theoretical nor to the practical sciences, although it is reputed to have a practical value. The telesmatical art is vain, for if we assume the positions of the spheres to exert a power on artificial products, this power will remain inside the product and not pass on to things outside it. As to conjuring, this is the type of thing that produces wonder, but it is certainly not a theoretical science. Whether alchemy really exists is very dubious; if it exists, its artificial product cannot be identical with the product of nature; art can at most become similar to nature but cannot attain nature itself in reality. ‘ As to the question whether it can produce anything which resembles the natural product generically, we do not possess sufficient data to assert categorically its impossibility or possibility, but only prolonged experiments over a lengthy period can procure the necessary evidence. We shall treat the four points Ghazali mentions one after the other.

Ghazali says:

The first point is their assertion that this connexion observed between causes and effects is of logical necessity, and that the existence of the cause without the effect or the effect without the cause is not within the realm of the contingent and possible. The second point is their assertion that human souls are substances existing by themselves, not imprinted on the body, and that the meaning of death is the end of their attachment to the body and the end of their direction of the body; and that otherwise the soul would exist at any time by itself. They affirm that this is known by demonstrative proof. The third point is their assertion that these souls cannot cease to exist, but that when they exist they are eternal and their annihilation cannot be conceived. The fourth point is their assertion that these souls cannot return to their bodies.

As to the first point, it is necessary to contest it, for on its negation depends the possibility of affirming the existence of miracles which interrupt the usual course of nature, like the changing of the rod into a serpents or the resurrection of the dead or the cleavage of the moon, b and those who consider the ordinary course of nature a logical necessity regard all this as impossible. They interpret the resurrection of the dead in the Qur’an by saying that the cessation of the death of ignorance is to be understood by it, and the rod which conceived the arch-deceiver, the serpent, by saying that it means the clear divine proof in the hands of Moses to refute the false doctrines of the heretics; and as to the cleavage of the moon they often deny that it took place and assert. that it does not rest on a sound tradition; and the philosophers accept miracles that interrupt the usual course of nature only in three cases.

First: in respect to the imaginative faculty they say that when this faculty becomes predominant and strong, and the senses and perceptions do not submerge it, it observes the Indelible Tablet, and the forms of particular events which will happen in the future become imprinted on it; and that this happens to the prophets in a waking condition and to other people in sleep, and that this is a peculiar quality of the imaginative faculty in prophecy.

Secondly: in respect of a property of the rational speculative faculty i. e. intellectual acuteness, that is rapidity in passing from one known thing to another; for often when a problem which has been proved is mentioned to a keen-sighted man he is at once aware of its proof, and when the proof is mentioned to him he understands what is proved by himself, and in general when the middle term occurs to him he is at once aware of the conclusion, and when the two terms of the conclusion are present in his mind the middle term which connects the two terms of the conclusion occurs to him. And in this matter people are different; there are those who understand by themselves, those who understand when the slightest hint is given to them, and those who, being instructed, understand only after much trouble; and while on the one hand it may be assumed that incapacity to understand can reach such a degree that a man does not understand anything at all and has, although instructed, no disposition whatever to grasp the intelligibles, it may on the other hand be assumed that his capacity and proficiency may be so great as to arrive at a comprehension of all the intelligibles or the majority of them in the shortest and quickest time. And this difference exists quantitatively over all or certain problems, and qualitatively so that there is an excellence in quickness and easiness, and the understanding of a holy and pure soul may reach through its acuteness all intelligibles in the shortest time possible; and this is the soul of a prophet, who possesses a miraculous speculative faculty and so far as the intelligibles are concerned is not in need of a teacher; but it is as if he learned by himself, and he it is who is described by the words ‘the oil ofwhich would well-nigh give light though no fire were in contact with it, light upon light’.

Thirdly: in respect to a practical psychological faculty which can reach such a pitch as to influence and subject the things of nature: for instance, when our soul imagines something the limbs and the potencies in these limbs obey it and move in the required direction which we imagine, so that when a man imagines something sweet of taste the corners of his mouth begin to water, and the potency which brings forth the saliva from the places where it is springs- into action, and when coitus is imagined the copulative potency springs into action, and the penis extends;z indeed, when a man walks on a plank between two walls over an empty space, his imagination is stirred by the possibility of falling and his body is impressed by this imagination and in fact he falls, but when this plank is on the earth, he walks over it without falling. ‘ This happens because the body and the bodily faculties are created to be subservient and subordinate to the soul, and there is a difference here according to the purity and the power o: the souls. And it is not impossible that the power of the soul should reach such a degree that also the natural power of things outside a man’s body obeys it, since the soul of man is not impressed on his body although there is created in man’s nature a certain impulse and desire to govern his body. And if it is possible that the limbs of his body should obey him, it is not impossible that other things besides his body should obey him and that his soul should control the blasts of the wind or the downpour of rain, or the striking of a thunderbolt or the trembling of the earth, which causes a land to be swallowed up with its inhabitants. s The same is the case with his influence in producing cold or warmth or a movement in the air; this warmth or cold comes about through his soul, b all these things occur without any apparent physical cause, and such a thing will be a miracle brought about by a prophet. But this only happens in matters disposed to receive it, and cannot attain such a scale that wood could be changed into an animal or that the moon, which cannot undergo cleavage, could be cloven. This is their theory of miracles, and we do not deny anything they have mentioned, and that such things happen to prophets; we are only opposed to their limiting themselves to this, and to their denial of the possibility that a stick might change into a serpent, and of the resurrection of the dead and other things. We must occupy ourselves with this question in order to be able to assert the existence of miracles and for still another reason, namely to give effective support to the doctrine on which the Muslims base their belief that God can do anything. And let us now fulfil our intention.

I say:

The ancient philosophers did not discuss the problem of miracles, since according to them such things must not be examined and questioned; for they are the principles of the religions, and the man who inquires into them and doubts them merits punishment, like the man who examines the other general religious principles, such as whether God exists or blessedness or the virtues. For the existence of all these cannot be doubted, and the mode of their existence is something divine which human apprehension cannot attain. The reason for this is that these are the principles of the acts through which man becomes virtuous, and that one can only attain knowledge after the attainment of virtue. ‘ One must not investigate the principles which cause virtue before the attainment of virtue, and since the theoretical sciences can only be perfected through assumptions and axioms which the learner accepts in the first place, this must be still more the case with the practical sciences.

As to what Ghazali relates of the causes of this as they are according to the philosophers, I do not know anyone who asserts this but Avicenna. And if such facts are verified and it is possible that a body could be changed qualitatively through something which is neither a body nor a bodily potency, ‘ then the reasons he mentions for this are possible; but not everything which in its nature is possible’ can be done by man, for what is possible to man is well known. Most things which are possible in themselves are impossible for man, and what is true of the prophet, that he can interrupt the ordinary course of nature, is impossible for man, but possible in itself; and because of this one need not assume that things logically impossible are possible for the prophets, and if you observe those miracles whose existence is confirmed, you will find that they are of this kind. The clearest of miracles is the Venerable Book of Allah, s the existence of which is not an interruption of the course of nature assumed by tradition, like the changing of a rod into a serpent, but its miraculous nature is established by way of perception and consideration for every man who has been or who will be till the day of resurrection. And so this miracle is far superior to all others.

Let this suffice for the man who is not satisfied with passing this problem over in silence, and may he understand that the argument on which the learned base their belief in the prophets is another, to which Ghazali himself has drawn attention in another place , b namely the act which proceeds from that quality through which the prophet is called prophet, that is the act of making known the mysterious and establishing religious laws which are in accordance with the truth and which bring about acts that will determine the happiness of the totality of mankind. I do not know anyone but Avicenna who has held the theory about dreams Ghazali mentions. The ancient philosophers assert about revelation and dreams only that they proceed from God through the intermediation of a spiritual incorporeal being which is according to them the bestower of the human intellect, and which is called by the best authors the active intellect and in the Holy Law angel. We shall now return to Ghazali’s four points.