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agency, physics and Islamic natural philosophy

I am not really sure of who it was, but I recall (or rather I seem to recall) reading about an Islamic philosopher who so denied secondary causality that it would seem that the whole world is annihilated and recreated from moment to moment (quantum unit of time? :) ).  Let's say it was Al-ghazali.

In any case, if one wants to do physics while regarding human agency as an illusion, then the basic concepts of physics would be metaphors based upon illusions: not the sort of foundation that would encourage one who seeks to understand reality better.

In such a case, even "force" would be too metaphysical.  So that all that science could deliver to us would be predictions about what appears when and where.  No information whatsoever about causality.  In such a case, nature, as so conceived, would be indistinguishable from nature as conceived by Al-ghazali--the only difference might be that the former offers a grid of Cartesian coordinates as a template for looking at the world.

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