Content area
Full Text
The Physical Theory of Kalam: Atoms, Space and Void in Basrian Mutazili Cosmology. By ALNOOR DHANANI. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science, Texts and Studies, 14. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1994. Pp. viii + 209. HF1 100, $57.25.
The primary focus of the present study is explicitly restricted to "one component of kalam cosmological speculation, namely physical theory" (p. 2), and, at that, within a fairly narrow scope. The work is based principally on Ibn Mattawayh's Tadhkira fi ahkam al-jawahir wal-a'rad together with an unpublished commentary by an unknown author, and on the Masa'il of Abu Rashid al-Nisaburi, though other pertinent texts are regularly cited. A brief introduction concerning the most important mutakallimun from the ninth into the eleventh centuries A.D. is followed by a relatively long presentation (pp. 15-54) of "epistemology, the theory of attributes, and the theory of accidents," which, though superficial, on the whole contains some very useful information in the sections on "the theory of change" and on how various classes of accidents are known (pp. 47ff.). The core of the book and its primary contribution to the study of classical Muctazilite atomism begins, thus, with chapter three: "Atoms, Space, and Void" (pp. 54-89). Here the author begins with a discussion of the origin and contextual background of the use of jawhar to name the atom and of its common equivalence, as such, with juz' (sc., al-juz'u l-ladhl la yatajazza': the particle which is indivisible into parts), followed by a brief presentation of Ibn Mattawayh's listing of the essential characteristics of the atom. Dhanani is basically correct in suggesting (p. 59) that what ultimately underlies the kalam use of jawhar is "the concept of the atom as the material substrate of change," and that the mutakallimun employed it to "denote the atom as the material substrate for inherent accidents." Within the historical context, jawhar and 'arad were given (inherited as elements in the lexica of a number of theoretical systems) and appropriated by the mutakallimun as, so to speak, names for the two main categories of primary created beings. Juz', by contrast, is a descriptive name of the atom as the ultimate, irreducible and indivisible quantum of spatial extension. One notes that juz' is also employed of the accident, both by leading...