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

I say:
sun performs in twenty-four hours. If now your adversary
says that this is plainly impossible, in what does your
argument differ from his? And suppose it is asked: Are the
numbers of these revolutions even or uneven or both even
and uneven or neither even nor uneven? If you answer, both
even and uneven, or neither even nor uneven, you say what
is evidently absurd. If, however, you say ‘even’ or ‘uneven’,
even and uneven become uneven and even by the addition
of one unit and how could infinity be one unit short? You
must, therefore, draw the conclusion that they are neither
even nor uneven.
This too is a sophistical argument. It amounts to saying: In the same way
as you are unable to refute our argument for the creation of the world in
time, that if it were eternal, its revolutions would be neither even nor
uneven, so we cannot refute your theory that the effect of an agent whose
conditions to act are always fulfilled cannot be delayed. This argument
aims only at creating and establishing a ; doubt, which is one of the
sophist’s objectives.
But you, reader of this book, you have already heard the arguments of
the philosophers to establish the eternity of the world and the refutation of
the Ash’arites. Now hear the proofs of the Ash’arites for their refutation
and hear the arguments of the philosophers to refute those proofs in the
wording of Ghazali!
[Here, in the Arabic text, the last passage of Ghazali, which previously was given only in an
abbreviated form, is repeated in full.]
I say:
This is in brief that, if you imagine two circular movements in one and the
same finite time and imagine then a limited part of these movements in
one and the same finite time, the proportion between the parts of these
two circular movements and between their wholes will be the same. For
instance, if the circular movement of Saturn in t the period which we call a
year is a thirtieth of the circular movement of the sun in this period, and
you imagine the whole of the circular movements of the sun in proportion
to the whole of the circular movements of Saturn in one and the same
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