Allah The Exalted — Page 68
6 of which hundreds of details are still to be discovered and we should not foolishly insist that the action of God Almighty cannot go beyond what we have already ob- served…. I wonder how can such things as are still awaiting a complete explanation of themselves, be the absolute measures of truth or be the criteria for judging it. This complicated problem has confused the philosophers so much that some of them, namely the Sophists, have de- nied altogether the qualities of matter, and some of them have asserted that though the qualities of matter are ad- mitted yet they lack permanence. Water puts out fire, but it is possible that under some heavenly or earthly effect the water of a spring might lose this quality. Fire burns wood, but it is possible that some fire, by reason of some inner or outer effect, might not exhibit this quality. Such wonders continue to happen from time to time. Philosophers have also said that certain heavenly or earthly qualities are manifested after thousands or hun- dreds of thousands of years. They appear supernatural to the uninitiated. Sometimes wonders occur in the heavens or on earth which confound great philosophers. They are driven to invent some law of physics or astronomy to accommodate them so that their law of nature may not be upset. So long as no flying fish had been observed, no philosopher admitted its existence. So long as through the process of continuously cutting off the tails of some dogs, tailless dogs were not produced, no philosopher admitted this possibility. So long as it was not discovered that in consequence of a severe earthquake in some place, a fire had started which melted stones but did not burn wood, philosophers considered such a quality as