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

views, or regarded this as permissible, but for the harm which results from
Ghazali’s doings to the cause of wisdom; and I understand by ‘wisdom’
speculation about things according to the rules of the nature of proof.
Ghazali says, on behalf of the philosophers:
If it is said that the highest sphere, or the sun, or
whatever body you may imagine, possesses a special size
which may be increased or decreased, and this possible size
needs for its differentiation a differentiating principle and can
therefore not be the First, ‘ we answer: By what argument
will you refute the man who says that this body must have
the size it possesses for the sake of the order of the
universe, and this order could not exist if this body were
smaller or larger-since you philosophers yourselves affirm
that the first effect’ determines the size of the highest sphere
because all sizes are equivalent in relation to the essence of
the first effect, but certain sizes are determined for the sake
of the order which depends on them and therefore the actual
size is necessary and no other is possible; and all this holds
just as well when no effect is assumed. Indeed, if the
philosophers had established in the first effect, which is
according to the philosophers the cause of the highest
sphere, a specifying principle, as for instance the will, a
further question might be put, since it might be asked why
this principle willed this actual size rather than another, in the
way the philosophers argued against the Muslims about their
theory of the relation between the temporal world and the
Eternal Will, an argument which we turned against them with
respect to the problems of the determination of the direction
of the heavenly movement and of the determination of the
points of the poles. And if it is clear that they are forced to
admit that a thing is differentiated from a similar one and that
this happens through a cause, it is unessential whether this
differentiation be regarded as possible without a cause or
through a cause, for it is indifferent whether one puts the
question about the thing itself and asks why it has such-and
such a size, or whether one puts the question about the
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