Continuous Re-Creation: From Kalam Atomism to Contemporary Cosmology

Jul 16, 2020 | Feature Articles

Garden-variety (or ordinary) objects or bodies are seemingly the most concrete physical entities around us. However, throughout history people have attempted to uncover the reality which lies behind these appearances. In this context the atomistic view, which claims that bodies are composed of discrete units that cannot be divided into smaller parts, was one of the main solutions developed in ancient times regarding this phenomenon.1 Pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Leucippus (480–420 Bc) and Democritus (460–370 Bc), propounded this idea in order to reconcile the principle of the unity and immutability of being with the multiplicity and the mutability of the visible world.2 Aristotle (384–322 Bc) rejected this view, claiming that accepting objects as discontinuous and discrete requires that the notions of space and time associated with objects should also be discrete in nature, which makes motion and extension or magnitude impossible.3 In the Hellenistic period philosophers such as Epicurus (342–270 Bc) and Lucretius (95–51 Bc) attempted to defend atomism again.4 However, the dominant view in the West, especially during the Middle Ages, was the Aristotelian theory of bodies as continuous and potentially divisible ad infinitum.5

After the Ancient Greeks Islamic theologians (mutakallimun) became the champions of atomism.6 The mutakallimun, on the basis of the principle of the finitude of events (itself based on the impossibility of an actual infinite), defended the view that not only matter but also the entire universe, including space, time, and motion, consists of finite units.7 Such an atomistic model of the universe had, in turn, important implications for Islamic theological concepts. At first, during the absorption of atomism from ancient cultures, the mutakallimun gave it a shape according to their theological considerations but, thereafter, it gradually affected their theological views. In this context, the continuous re-creation and the rejection of natural causality were both theological theories that were developed as a consequence of the atomistic worldview.8 So, unlike the Christian West, which declared this theory heretical due to its materialist basis9,  the Islamic theologians made this theory the basis of the occasionalist relationship between God and the universe, in which God is the only efficient cause, and constantly re-creates the universe at every moment.10

In Islamic thought, the theory of atomism was not a marginal view held by only a few individuals and groups; rather, it was adopted as official doctrine by the majority of Muslim theologians and became a pre- dominant model for explaining reality from the ninth to the twelfth century.11 As it was widely discussed and accepted, it gained a coherent structure and became a comprehensive model of the universe. However, in the period after al-Ghazali (1058–1111), it began to decline due to Aristotelian and Neo-Platonist theses defended by Peripatetics (Mashsha’un), and the rise of mysticism that challenged rationalist and materialist views of the world. In fact, while not abandoned completely, it would not hold a central position in Islamic theology after the twelfth century.12 However, the Islamic theologians who inherited this tradition from the ancient world not only protected this theory, but also promoted its revival in the West.13

The cosmological paradigm shift, which began with the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe, led Western thinkers to search for alternative natural philosophies to that of Aristotle. In this context, philosophers such as Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), and Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) showed a renewed interest in old atomistic views.14 The French priest and astronomer Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) attempted a reconciliation of Epicurean atomism with Christianity.15 Also, leading influential natural philosophers at the time, such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Isaac Newton (1642–1727), Robert Boyle (1629–98), John Locke (1632–1704), and W. Charleton (1620–1707) championed philosophical and theological atomism in various domains.16

In the eighteenth century, scientists such as Joseph Black (1728–99), C.W Scheele (1742–86), John Priestly (1733-1804), and Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) proved through their experimental research that air, which was accepted as an element by Aristotle, is actually a compound consisting of oxygen and nitrogen. Later on, the French scientist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94) demonstrated that water is not an element but consists of two separate components, hydrogen and oxygen.17 Soon the combustion theory (phlogiston), based on the doctrine of the four elements, was also shown to be false; it was further proven that it was a form of energy and soil was composed of many different elements. So the doctrine of the four elements, which had prevailed in the West for more than two thousand years, was invalidated18.

In 1808, the British chemist and physicist John Dalton (1766–1844) took the  first steps on the road towards scientific atomism by assuming that all elements consist of indivisible atoms identical in weight and characteristics.19 Then came the Italian chemist Amedeo Avogadro’s (1776–1856) studies on the molecular structure of gases which states that under the same pressure and warmness gases consist of the same amount of molecules; this was in turn followed by the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev’s (1834–1907) arrangement of the periodic table in 1868. Eventually, the opinion that atoms bear all the chemical characteristics of a given element, and are not further chemically reducible to another element, became fixed and common.

Mehmet Bulğen

Marmara University
Dr. Mehmet Bulğen is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theology, Marmara University, Istanbul. He received his PhD in kalam om the Institute of Social Science in Marmara University in 2013. He was a fellow atthe Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, Canada, in 2014. His current research projects include criticisms of kalam atomism in classical Islamic thought and evaluations of Qur’anic cosmological verses according to contemporary cosmology.

* This article is based on my PhD dissertation “Evaluation of Classical Kalam Atomism According to Contemporary Cosmology”, prepared under the supervision of Professor Dr. Ilyas Çelebi at the Institute of Social Sciences, Marmara University, 2013.

1 Jennifer Trusted, Mystery of Matter (London: Macmillan, 1999), 12.

2 W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy: The Pre-Socratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2:389 .; David Furley, The Greek CosmologistsThe Formation of the Atomic Theory and its Earliest Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 115; Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 105.

3 On Aristotle’s defense that space and time can be divided into indefinitely, see Max Jammer, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics (Dover Publications: New York, 1993), 17; David Furley, “Aristotle and the Atomist on Infinity”, in Cosmic Problems (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 103 .; Leslie Jaye Kavanaugh, The Architectonic of Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 94–6; Alan Chalmers, The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s StoneHow Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (New York: Springer, 2009), 34; A. Cornelus Benjamin, “Ideas of Time in the History of Philosophy”, in The Voices of Time, ed. J.T. Fraser (New York: Braziller, 1966), 12–15.

4 Epicurus, Letters and Sayings of Epicurus, trans. Odysseus Makridis (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005), 1–29; Lucretius, The Nature of The Universe, trans. R. E. Latham (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951); Pierre-Marie Morel, “Epicurean Atomism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, ed. James Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 65.

5 Norris S. Hetherington, “Aristotle’s Cosmology”, in Encyclopedia of Cosmology, ed. Norris S. Hetherington (New York: Garland Pub., 1993), 19–20; Andrew G. Van Melsen, From Atomos to Atom (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1952), 49 .

6 Andrew Pyle, Atomism and Its Critics (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), 210–11.

7 The most important characteristic of kalam atomism is that it covers a comprehensive model of the universe. In this context, Islamic theologians claim that not only atoms, but also their interactions (ekvan), attributes (araz), space, time and motion, that is, the universe as a whole, consists of finite units. Regarding this subject see Mehmet Bulgen, “Klasik Donem Kelam Atomculugunun Gunumuz Kozmolojisi Açısından Degerlendirilmesi” (PhD diss., Marmara University, 2013), 157.

8 In fact, early Mu’tazili theologians, who introduced atomism into Islamic theology, were not strictly occasionlist and tried to develop different concepts such as the conjugation (iqtiran), generation (tawlid), dependence (itimad), custom (ada) in order to explain causal relations between different natural phenomena. However, atomism does not provide an appropriate basis for such conceptualization, therefore the system had rapidly evolved into occasionalism. The main reason for this is that atomism depends on the discontinuity principle, and makes everything in the universe disconnected and disjointed, including matter, space, time, and motion. Osman Bakar, “The Atomistic Conception of Nature in Asharite Theology”, in The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1999), 91; see also M.B. Altaie, “Daqiq al-Kalam: The Islamic Approach to Natural Philosophy”, 6, a paper delivered at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, UK, 26 January 2005.

9 Josef van Ess, “Mu’tazilite Atomism”, in The Flowering of Muslim Theology, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 79–115. For example, Dante sends atomic philosophers such as Democritus and Epicurus to the bottom of the layers of hell; see Joseph Anthony Mazzeo, “Dante and Epicurus”, in Comparative literature 10 (Spring 1958), 106–20.

10 Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958), 23; Duncan B. Macdonald, “Continuous Re-Creation and Atomic Time in Muslim Scholastic Theology”, The Muslim World 18, no. 1 (1928): 6–28.

11 There are a lot of classical and modern works on kalam atomism, but the most important classical works are: Ebu Reşid en-Nisaburi (d. 415/1024), el-Mesail fī’l-hilaf beyne’l-Bas- riyyin ve’l-Bagdadiyyin; Ibn Metteveyh (d. 469/1075) et-Tezkire fī ahkami’l- cevahir ve’l-a‘raz’; Musa bin Meymun (Maimonides) (d. 601/1204) Delaletü’l- Hairin; Ebu’l-Mu’in en-Nese  (d. 508/1115). Modern studies on kalam atomism include: Shlomo Pines, Beitrage zur islamischen Atomenlehre (Berlin: Graefenhainichen, 1936); Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Alnoor Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994); Husam al-Alousi, The Problem of Creation in Islamic Thought (Baghdad: National Printing and Publishing, 1965); Muna Ahmed Muhammed Ebu Zeyd, et-Tasavvuru’z-zerri  ’l- kri’l-felse-yyi’l-İslami (Beirut, 1994); Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); M. B. Altaie, Daqiq al-kalam (Jordan, 2010); Otto Pretzl, “Die fruhislamische Atomenlehre”, Der Islam 19 (1931): 117–30; Richard M. Frank, “Bodies and Atoms: The Ashcarite Analysis”, in Islamic Theology and Philosophy, ed. Michael E. Marmura (Albany: State University of New York Press,1984); A. I. Sabra, “Kalam Atomism as an Alternative Philosophy to Hellenizing Falsafa”, in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy, ed. James E. Montgomery (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 199 –271; Tzvi Langermann, “Islamic Atomism and the Galenic Tradition”, History of Science 47 (2009), 277–95.

12 See Alnoor Dhanani, “Atomism in Islamic Thought”, in Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Helaine Selin (The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 139–43.

13 Tau k Ibrahim K., “Ancient Heritage in Kalam Philosophy”, in Values in Islamic Culture and the Experience of History, ed. N. S. Kirabaev (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2002), 99–134.

14 Robert H. Kargon, “Atomism in the Seventeenth Century”, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 1:132–41; John Henry, “Matter”, in Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Wilbur Applebaum (New York: Garland, 2000), 621.

15 Lynn Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist: Advocate of History in an Age of Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 180; Lauge Olaf Nielsen, “A Seventeenth-Century Physician on God and Atoms”, in Memory of Jan Pinborg, ed. Norman Kretzmann (The Netherlands: Kluwer, 1988), 297–369. For Epicurean atomism as the source of the birth of modern atomism in Gassendi’s footsteps, see John Masson, The Atomic Theory of Lucretius Contrasted With Modern Doctrines (London: G. Bell, 1884), 5.

16 James A. Altena, “Revival of Corpuscular Theories During the Seventeenth Century”, in Science and Its Times, ed. Neil Schlager (Detroit: Gale Group, 2000), 3:354; Bernard Pullman, The Atom in the History of Human Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 124); John W. Clarke, “Atomism”, in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy, ed. Anthony Grayling et al. (Bristol: Theommes Continuum, 2006), 154. In his book Opticks, Newton’s definition of material particles was as follows: “It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and  figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that those primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no mundane power being able to divide what God himself intended to be indivisible.” Newton, Opticks (London: W. and J. Innys, 1718), 375.

17 David Philip Miller, Discovering Water (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 27 ; Andrew Ede, The Chemical Element: A Historical Perspective (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 54–5; Pullman, The Atom in the History of Human Thought, 18.

18 John Read, “Chemistry”, in What Is Science?, ed. James R. Newman (New York: Simonand Schuster,1955),164–6.

19 John Dalton described the indestructible character of atoms as follows: “Chemical analysis and synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion. No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of chemical agency. We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen. All the changes we can produce consist in separating particles that are in a state of cohesion or combination, and joining those that were previously at a distance.” A New System of Chemical Philosophy (Manchester: Bickerstan, 1808), 143, 212.

20 Alan Chalmers, “Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2010 Edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, .