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Updated: June 15, 2025
As a matter of fact the Mutakallimun believe that the atoms were created ex nihilo. But the creation of the world can be proved whichever view we adopt concerning the nature of the existent, whether it be the atomic theory of the Mutakallimun or the principles of matter and form of the Aristotelians.
The truth is, that though mediaeval thinkers knew far more of the writings of Aristotle than they did of those of Plato, they were none the less far better Platonists than they were Aristotelians.
The main problem, therefore, of Jewish philosophy is not touched upon in Israeli's works, and no wonder Maimonides had no use for them. For the purely scientific questions treated by Israeli could in Maimonides's day be studied to much better advantage in the works of the great Arabian Aristotelians, Al Farabi and Avicenna, compared to whom Israeli was mediocre.
This, therefore, is another of the attributes by which the species man is distinguished from other species of the same genus: would this attribute serve equally well for a differentia? The Aristotelians say No; having laid it down that the differentia must, like the genus and species, be of the essence of the subject.
This was discussed in connection with the general theory of the intellect and the three kinds of intellect that were distinguished by the Arabian Aristotelians, the material, the acquired and the active.
These discoveries, it would seem, are not favorably received by the Aristotelians; however, he continues his labors, and points his telescope to the planets and fixed stars, but the magnitude of the latter remain the same, while the planets appear with disks like the moon.
The Aristotelians taught the eternity of the world, the immutability of natural law, God's ignorance of particulars and the absence of special Providence. These doctrines must be condemned. Maimonides too rejects these extreme teachings while praising Aristotle and maintaining that philosophy was originally a possession of the Israelitish people, which they lost in the exile.
If they had been better Aristotelians, they would have been better biologists; but as they were good Platonists, they had a conception of the purpose and system of human life in society, which perhaps excuses all, and more than all, the defects of their biology.
It is not true that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians, and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in it.
In his war against the Aristotelians, the intrepid friar upheld recourse to experiment and observation as superior to deference to authority, in language which stands in strange contrast to the traditions of the thirteenth century.
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