Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 68-78

www.brill.nl/esm

The Simple Ontology of Kalm Atomism: An Outline

A.I. Sabra*

Harvard University

Abstract is paper aims to present concisely the Islamic kalm atomism as an alternative philosophy to Hellenizing falsafa. Kalm is a theological-philosophical discourse which, rst (in the third/ninth century) ventured to rival the falsafa represented early by al-Kind (d.ca. 252/866), then by al-Frb and Avicenna in the fourth/tenth and fth/ eleventh centuries, and which eventually (in the sixth/twelfth century and after) appeared to be inclined to propose a mingling of the kalm discourse with falsafa in a series of varied syntheses.Focusing on the simple ontology of the basic kalm atomism, and noting the hybrid character of kalm, the aim of this paper is to help to clarify the inevitable problematic consequences of those late ventures of Islamic intellectualism. Keywords kalm, atomism, Ab mid al-Ghazl, al-Ash ar, al-j, al-Na m, al-Mu tazila

I
... only the Exalted God and His actions exist. e Asharite Ab mid al-Ghazl, d. 505/11111 * History of Science Department, Science Center 371, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. (sabra@fas.harvard.edu). Web Site, including a complete list of publications: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sabra. 1) Al-Ghazl, al-Musta f min ilm al-u l, Blq, 1322, vol. I, pp. 26-27: [...] knowing/knowledge is the occurrence of forms, or similitudes, of things, in the mirror of reason (al- aql); and reason is the innate disposition (al-gharza) through which it is able to receive the forms; now, the soul, or the human reality that is endowed with this innate disposition to receive the intelligibles, [acts] like a mirror. [...] this analogy will help [the reader] to understand what knowing really is; for when the real intelligibles
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI : 10.1163/157338209X425506

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1. Introduction 1.1. Al-Kalm, or what came to be known to its practitioners as the science of al-kalm, ilm al-kalm, is a theological-philosophical discourse which arose in Ba ra and Baghdad shortly before the time when the Abbasid rulers in Baghdad undertook to promote the astounding projects of translating Greek medicine, science, mathematics and philosophy into Arabic at the middle of the second/ eighth century.It should be noted immediately that at least some of the early Abbasid rulers were also supportive of the rst large kalm school, the so-called Mu tazila or Mu tazils, who were known for championing the role of reason/al- aql in theological thinking. In the fourth/tenth century a well-practiced Mu tazilite, Ab l- asan al-Ash ar (d. 324/935), broke away from the Mu tazila to found what eventually came to be the largest school of kalm known as the Ash ars or Ash arites. Despite some signicant doctrinal dierences between the two schools, it is the opinion of the present writer (and others) that some specic and important Ash arite doctrines can and should be understood as natural, if not logical, developments of Mu tazilite doctrines. And in accordance with this opinion, it is my assumption that a correct and complete understanding of Ash arism is not possible without grasping the earlier Mu tazilite arguments, many of which have been preserved in al-Ash ars own clear and precise accounts in his outstanding Maqlt al-Islmiyyn/ Islamic Doctrines.2 1.2. e well-known third-/ninth-century littrateur, al-J i (d. 255/868-9), who originated in Ba ra, was also a noted mutakallim, or practitioner of kalm, and the leader of a school of kalm known after his name. He wrote in his monumental book, called Animals
impress themselves upon the rational soul, they will be called knowledge. And, just as the heavens and the trees and the rivers are conceived to be seen in a mirror as if they existed in the mirror, and as if the mirror contained them all, so the whole divine presence (al- a ra al-ilhiyya) is conceived to be impressed upon the human soul. Now, the divine presence is an expression for the totality of existing things, all of them being [part] of the divine presence since only the exalted God and His actions exist (idh laysa f l-wujdi ill Allha ta l wa af lahu). 2) Hellmut Ritter, ed., Ab l- asan al-Ash ar, Maqlt al-Islmiyyn, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden, 1963).

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(Kitb al- ayawn), a sentence to the eect that the practice of kalm as an argumentative discourse on religion (called kalm al-dn) would be less than perfect unless it was brought to the level of the discourse of philosophy (kalm al-falsafa). I have used that sentence as a motto for an article with the title Kalm Atomism as An Alternative Philosophy to Hellenizing Falsafa.3 On this occasion I should like to focus on some features of the atomistic theory forming a basis of kalm as discussed by the early school of the Mu tazila and as later developed by al-Ash ar and his early followers. 1.3. Even as a discourse on religion, kalm obviously inclined, right from the start, to use forms of arguments some of which were clearly employed by ancient (and modern) philosophers; and it is of course important to identify these forms, their sources and characteristics.In the article just mentioned I briey describe some of these forms. Now I am concerned only with a basic, though apparently overlooked, form of argument, namely the ontology that lays the foundation of a certain kind of atomism explored and generally chosen by the Mu tazila and later developed and adapted by al-Ash ar and his followers. 2. e Ontology of Kalm Atomism

2.1. Ontology is the theory of what there is. My aim is to answer the question: what is it, for kalm, and, in particular, Ash arite kalm, that exists in the created World (al- lam); or, more specifically, what is it that exists in the World according to the basic doctrine of kalm atomism known to the mutakallimn (practitioners of kalm) as daqq al-kalm, subtle kalm.My proposed answer to this question will be: not things, but events or occurrences ( awdith) in space and time; and this answer will imply that the atom itself is

3) is article is contained in James E. Montgomery, ed., Arabic eology, Arabic Philosophy: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank (Leuven, 2006), 199-272.Hereafter, I shall refer to this article as KAF.

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such an occurrence or event that is presupposed by all other events in the World.4 2.2. My argument can be summarised briey as follows. By definition, events are characterised by four co-ordinates: three of them are those of space, and they attach to the atom called simple or individual substance (al-jawhar al-bas , or al-jawhar al-fard), or to aggregates of atoms called composite substances, also by virtue of being occupiers of place; the fourth co-coordinate is the time at which a quality or property (ma n) or accident (ara ) momentarily inheres, or comes-to-occur, in a simple atom or in an aggregate of atoms called body. 2.3. Space and time, both being neither substances nor accidents, they are consequently conceived and clearly treated as relations or conventions.5 3. e Denition of Atom as a Postulate

3.1. e denition of atom as a simple, individual or indivisible substance is itself also a postulate asking us to grant these qualications, just as in the way that Euclids denition of point asks us to grant that a point is that which has no part/smeion estin, ou meros outhen. at means that we are not at liberty to confer upon the atom other qualities such as size and shape.As a substance, then, the atom is completely characterized as a place-occupying entity, and completely dened as a simple or indivisible entity that occupies place.

Note that the English verb to occur, like the Arabic verb adatha, from which the singular noun adath (occurrence) and the derived plural, awdith, is intransitive, and so is to-come-to-be, kna. By contrast, to create, and the Arabic khalaqa, are transitive, implying a creator/khliq and a created/makhlq. 5) See KAF, 206-07, esp. 215-17; A ud al-Dn al-j, Kitb al-Mawqif f ilm al-Kalm [hereafer: Mawqif], ed. Ibrhm al-Dusq A iyya and A mad al- anbul (Cairo, 1357/1938-39); on relativity of time, see 112.See also: Al-Tahnaw, Mu ammad A l ... al-Frq, Kashshf I il t al-Funn, 3 vols, Dr dir, Beirt, no date, vol. II:619-623, entry on time: al-Zamn, esp. 621, on the mutakallimn, particularly al-Ash ar and his followers.
4)

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3.2. e well-known debate, rst initiated among the Mu tazila, as to how many atoms are necessary to make up a body (jism), or composite substance, came to be considered by some leading Ash arites as a useless digression: we can regard two composed atoms as length, meaning that they can be imagined to be joined by a straight line, or else call them an aggregate of two atoms; similarly, we can call three composed atoms a plane, meaning that they can be joined by three non-collinear lines, or a particular aggregate of three atoms; and, again, we might call four atoms a body, or another particular aggregate of four atoms.But a body must be dened as that which has length, breadth and depththese three characteristics being distinguished among themselves by means of the concept of right angle.For the inuential fourteenth-century Ash arite A ud al-Dn al-j (d. 756/1355), the early well-known debate had been merely a verbal [that is, useless] dispute.6 3.3. As for us, we can easily see the decisive Euclidean contributions to the denitions of atom and body. 4. Modes of Coming-to-be in Space: al-akwn 4.1. e behaviour of atoms in space is completely described in terms of exactly four accidents (a r . sing. ara ) all of which expressed as distinct modes of coming-to-be (akwn, sing. kawn, from kna, to-be or to come-to-be): at any single moment, an existing atom either comes-to-be in-motion, or comes-to-be at-rest; and, simultaneously, it might come-to-be in-separation-from and/ or in-contact-with another atom or group of atoms. 4.2. us motion involves two places and two times; and rest involves two times and one place; and, therefore, both motion and rest involve a coming-to-be at every moment during their initially created existence. 4.3. Al-Ash ar, in contrast to the Mu tazila, and especially against the often misunderstood al-Na m (d. 230/845), did not regard the initial creation of an atom or body in the World as motion,
See, in KAF, Mar ad (i) in js Mawqif On Bodies, 259-271, especially the discussion on what he calls the true [doctrine], and note 32.
6)

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for the reason that initial creation is not preceded by the atoms or bodys being-at-rest or in-motion.) 4.4. In regard to separation: when an atom A comes-to-be inseparation-from B, then B would have simultaneously come-to-be in-separation-from A. is illustrates the relativity of spatial locations. 4.5. In regard to contact, it may be noted that the term actually covered all cases involving touching (mumssa) of substancessuch as pressure, impact, collision, cohesion, etc. 4.6. To be noted, and kept in mind, is the fact that the four akwn are all explicated in terms of the basic concept of comingto-be (al-kawn).Not to observe this is to miss the direction of argument in all of kalm ontology from the start. To complete the argument, we only need to turn to kalm explication of accidents, as will now be shown.7 5. Motion as Departure (zawl). Rest as a Coming-to-be (kawn). An Obvious and Denitive Rupture with Aristotelianism 5.1. Two assertions are especially important about the kalm doctrines of motion and rest; both assertions are shared by the Ash ars and the Mu tazils. First is the denition of motion only in terms of place and time, and in the total absence of all Aristotelian concepts like actuality and potentiality, and completion or perfection, and of any Neoplatonic concepts. Descartes would agree. 5.2. e denition of motion is consistent with al-Ash ars explicit understanding of motion simply in terms of departure (zawl) from one place to anotherperiod. 5.3. e second assertion is the explication of rest in terms of a coming-to-beexactly as in the case of motion; which implies that to-be-at-rest at p at time t is not, of necessity (or, of itself ) followed by a being-at-rest at p at the immediately following moment;

7) On the akwn doctrine, and on motion, see KAF, pp. 209-11, and pp. 211-15; for the supporting quotations in English translation, see KAF, pp. 221 and following pages.

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which in turn signals that a cause is always involved in both motion and rest, and in both separation and contact. As the reader will have guessed, the cause, for the Ah ars, is always meta-physical, being no other than Gods free and unmediated action.But we still have to introduce the role of accidents. 6. Accidents: What they Are, Generally8 6.1. Generally, accidents (a r , sing. ara ) are occurrences that come to inhere in (taqmu f) a single or composite substance, only for a single moment.Note that it is through this instantaneous inherence or attachment that an accident acquires its momentary position in space, thereby gaining the qualication of being an event or occurrence in space as well as time. 6.2. But, as a result of considering all accidents as occurrences in a subject (f maw ), that is, a place-occupying substance, it was inevitable for the mutakallimn, both Mu tazils and Ash ars, to confront the following question with regard to motion as departure from one place to another: namely, where must the accident motion occur9at the rst or the second place? 6.2.1. at, we now know, was the kind of question that plagued all exclusive subject-predicate ontologies throughout the history of philosophy, until they were exorcized by Bertrand Russell. For al-Ash ar, the answer was: that stepping into the Mosque from the street is identical with abandoning or departing from the street. 7. Accidents as Dened by the Mu tazila and the Ash arites 7.1. For the Ash ars, accident is both what comes-to-be and stands, resides or inheres in (qma f) what occupies place. Whereas, for the Mu tazils, accident is that which, if it exists, must inhere in what occupies place, their reason being that accident is, by itself,
8) In js Mawqif, the discussions of accidents (al-a r ) occupy the pages KFA, 96-181; they have yet to receive the attention they certainly deserve. 9) See al-Ash ar s Maqlt al-Islmyn, 353-56; KFA, 235-37; and Ibn Frak, Mujarrad Maqlt al-Ash ar, ed. Daniel Gimaret (Beirut, 1987).

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only a denite or determinate (thbit) description, whether it does or does not exist. is is not the place to comment in any detail on the important discussions in kalm about whether the non-existent is a thing (hal al-ma dm shay , i.e. some-qualication-or-other, which seems to be a question about existence rather than about thing.) However: 7.2. Explicating, briey, the Mu tazilite argument, we may say that a square circle and an oval circle both do not exist, and yet they are distinct one from the other by virtue of their determinate and diering accidents, namely square and oval.10 7.3. e falsifa, for their part, are understood as holding that an accident is that which, if it has external existence, must inhere in a supporting subject (maw ) also termed ma all muqawwim, supporting substrate). 8. Characteristics of Accidents, Especially for al-Ash ar and His Followers 8.1. By denition, then, an accident, for al-Ash ar and his followers, does not inhere in another accident, but always in a substrate (ma all) which itself occupies place; speed, for example, is not a quality of motion but of the body in motion. 8.2. Moreover, accidents do not migrate from one substrate to another; what may appear as a loco-motion (intiql) of one and the same accident is in fact a creation in some substance of another instance (shakh ) of the quality inhering in the other substance. 8.3. us one and the same quality cannot inhere in two substrates at once; the black inhering in one substrate is existentially other than the black inhering in the other.
It may be helpful to note that (for the Mu tazila) a ifa thubtiyya is either a denite (thbit) attribute of the ing (al-dht) of which it is an attribute, without including any additional qualities of the ing, such as being a substance, or something else that exists; or the ifa thubtiyya is a qualifying attribute ( ifa ma nawiyya) indicating a characteristic over and above the ing, such as occupying-place (ta ayyuz), or coming-tobe ( udth), or accepting accidents.
10)

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8.4. And, nally, an accident does not itself endure for more than one instant; only the free-acting Creator determines how long it persists, that is, how long it continually comes-into-being. 8.5. Accidents may of course belong to a living thing, and when they do they are the life itself and all the accidents/qualities that accompany the presence of life, including, e.g., willing, perceiving, believing, knowing, and the ability to perform other actions. 8.6. All remaining accidents are comprised of the four comingsto-be (al-akwn) plus the sensible qualities (al-ma sst) of placeoccupying entities. 9. Two Historical Comments 9.1. As can be imagined, all these doctrines were bound to provoke, not trivial or verbal disputes, but substantial and long-lasting arguments between, on one hand, the mutakallimn, both Ash ars and Mu tazils, and, on the other hand, the committed falsifa, who clung to positions received from Aristotle and his ancient supporting commentators and from the Neoplatonists, or, what is historically most important, the hopeful conciliators of kalm and falsafa. 9.2. e resulting debates in fact constituted the major and dominant part of what we often refer to as Islamic philosophical thought from, say, the time of Fakhr al-Dn al-Rz (d. 606/1209) on. II 10. God and Humans So far in this account, God has been mentioned as the sole cause/ creator of all events in a World of substances and accidents, including of course humans (al-insn) and what humans seem to be able to do. By introducing humans as creatures under obligation to their creator we come to a distinct and fundamental aspect of kalm referred to as a theology concerned with what are called Traditions/Sam iyyt.Under this aspect we meet, for example, the con-

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cept of origination or initial creation of the World in time, and we see ourselves as actors in a drama of birth, death and resurrection, always expressed in terms of right and wrong, punishment and reward, both measured and distributed by a just and compassionate God. Above all we come to the questions of Gods existence and His attributes, being questions of our knowledge of His existence, His attributes and His demands, etc. At this point philosophy must make room for what is acquired from the Revealed Book and from the Last Messenger to whom e Book was rst revealed; and, accordingly, kalm discussions have been bound to take the form of a hybrid discourse that is concerned with Traditions/Sam iyyt as well as rational arguments. And yet, we should keep in mind that neither the subtle kalm/ daqq al-kalm, concerned with the behaviour of atoms and bodies in space, nor the exalted kalm/jall al-kalm, mainly concerned with God and His relations with humans, were ever completely detached from what we normally call rational thinking.It should be remembered that both the Mu tazila and the Ash arites were definitely and explicitly against taqld, or the slavish acceptance of authority. And one would therefore hope that the recent modern period in which kalm was mostly regarded as merely apologetic discourse is now denitely over. III e preceding is written as a philosophical argument clarifying a position that may be suggested by the following hypothesis consisting of thirteen propositions: 1. 2. 3. e world (al- lam) is all that occurs (kullu m ya duth). Occurrences are events ( awdith) in space and time: all have space and time coordinates. Occurrences consist of the coming into being of place-occupying entities called substances (sing. jawhar), and of accidents (sing. ara ) that may only reside (ta illu f) or inhere (taqmu f) in substances momentarily.

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4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Substances are initially created (tukhlaq, tubtada , tukhtara ) and subsequently re-created (tu d) at every moment of their span of existence. Substances are of two types ( arbn): (1) simple or individual substances (sing. jawhar bas , or jawhar fard or munfarid), called atoms (sing. al-juz , or al-juz alladh l yatajazza : the part, or the indivisible part); and (2) composites of these, called bodies. Four accidents, known as al-akwn, the comings-to-be, completely describe the possible behaviour of substances as place occupiers: at every moment, a substance (atom or body) either (1) comes-to-be in motion, from one place to another, or (2) comes-to-be at rest in one and the same place; and, through motion and rest, a substance may (3) come-to-be in contact with, or (4) in separation from, another substance or substances. Accidents acquire their spatial positions from their inevitable association with place-occupying substances. Space and time, being neither substances nor accidents that reside or inhere in substances, are relations: Space is an order of relations that happen to obtain between substance-occupied places (positions) at any moment. Time is an arbitrary convention of correlating coincident or simultaneous events. All occurrences are contingent, all of them being choices or free actions of a transcendent, unique and omnipotent Agent: In the created world of events, there are no Aristotelian substances, no natures or natural powers or forces, no forms or essences or necessities; there is only one, meta-physical, cause which acts without means or intermediary agents: Creating, the act of a transcendent Being, is that which is created (al-khalq huwa l-makhlq).