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

which has produced it in its peculiar shape out of a number
of possible distinct shapes which are equivalent; why, then,
has this cause differentiated some of them? If to distinguish
two similar things is impossible, it is irrelevant whether this
concerns the act of God, natural causality, or the logical
necessity of ideas. Perhaps you will say: the universal order
of the world could not be different from what it is; if the world
were smaller or bigger than it actually is, this order would not
be perfect, and the same may be asserted of the number of
spheres and of stars. And perhaps you will say: The big
differs from the small and the many from the few, in so far as
they are the object of the will, and therefore they are not
similar but different; but human power is too feeble to
perceive the modes of Divine Wisdom in its determination of
the measures and qualities of things; only in some of them
can His wisdom be perceived, as in the obliquity of the
ecliptic in relation to the equator, and in the wise contrivance
of the apogee and the eccentric sphere.’ In most cases,
however, the secret is not revealed, but the differences are
known, and it is not impossible that a thing should be
distinguished from another, because the order of the world
depends on it; but certainly the times are absolutely
indifferent in relation to the world’s possibility and its order,
and it cannot be claimed that, if the world were created one
moment later or earlier, this order could not be imagined;
and this indifference is known by the necessity of thought.-
But then we answer: Although we can employ the same
reasoning against your argument in the matter of different
times, for it might be said that God created the world at the
time most propitious for its creation, we shall not limit
ourselves to this refutation, but shall assume, according to
your own principle, a differentiation in two points about which
there can be no disagreement: (1) the difference in the
direction of spherical movement; (2) the definite place of the
poles in relation to the ecliptic in spherical movement. The
proof of the statement relating to the poles is that heaven is
a globe, moving on two poles, as on two immovable points,
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