Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

of events out of time is like the uncoiling of a rope-quasi rudentis
explicatio), and we believe that the plant lies in the seed, the future in the
present. For example: when a child is born we believe it to have certain
dispositions; it may have a disposition to become a musician, and when all
the conditions are favourable it will become a musician. Now, according to
Aristotle, becoming is nothing but the actualization of a potentiality, that is
the becoming actual of a disposition. However, there is a difficulty here. It
belongs to one of the little ironies of the history of philosophy that
Aristotle’s philosophy is based on a concept, i.e. potentiality, that has been
excluded by a law that he was the first to express consciously. For
Aristotle is the first to have stated as the supreme law of thought (or is it a
law of reality?) that there is no intermediary between being and non-being.
But the potential, i.e. the objective possible, is such an intermediary; it is
namely something which is, still is not yet. Already the Eleatics had
declared that there is no becoming, either a thing is or it is not. If it is, it
need not become. If it is not-out of nothing nothing becomes. Besides,
there is another difficulty which the Megarians have shown.
You say that your child has a disposition to become a musician, that he
can become a musician, but if he dies as a child, or when conditions are
unfavourable, he cannot become a musician. He can only become one
when all the conditions for his being a musician are fulfilled. But in that
case it is not possibly that he will be a musician, necessarily he will be
one. There is in fact no possibility of his being a musician before he
actually is one. There is therefore no potentiality in nature and no
becoming of things out of potencies. Things are or are not. This Megarian
denial of potentiality has been taken over by the Ash‘arites, and Ghazali in
this book is on the whole, although not consistently, in agreement with
them. I myself regard this problem as one of the cruces of philosophy. The
Ash‘arites and Ghazali believed, as the Megarians did, that things do not
become and that the future does not lie in the present; every event that
occurs is new and unconnected with its predecessor. The theologians
believed that the world is not an independent universe, a self-subsistent
system, that develops by itself, has its own laws, and can be understood
by itself. They transferred the mystery of becoming to the mystery of God,
who is the cause of all change in the world, and who at every moment
creates the world anew. Things are or are not. God creates them and
annihilates them, but they do not become out of each other, there is no
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