The celestial spheres
object · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
al-aflāk · the celestial bodies · the celestial positions · the highest sphere · the spheres · الا ثار العلويه · الافلاك · الجسم الاول · الفلك الاعلى
in the texts
Kitāb al-Zawrāʼ wa-al-taʻlīqāt ʻalayhi
The heavenly bodies whose single individual motion generates the sempiternal extension and whose endlessly successive positions the philosophers made the preparatory causes of events.
The verification of this is that the celestial bodies have a single motion in individual number, namely the being-mean between the posited positions, from which there is traced in the imagination the sempiternal extension that is expressed, in the usage of the people of theory, as motion in the sense of traversal;
So they answered this by tracing the events back to causes that prepare them, infinite in number and impossible of assembly — namely the celestial positions realized by the sempiternal motion of the spheres, each of those positions being preceded by another without end.
for those positions, even if it be granted that they are not existent, are not purely posited, since necessarily the position concomitant with the present instant today is other than the position concomitant with the like of this instant yesterday.
Risālat baqāʼ al-nafs baʻda fanāʼ al-jasad
The eternal heavenly spheres of aetherial substance, the highest of which is the first body moved by the overflow from the hidden governing power, so that all subsequent motion derives from it.
But there overflowed to those spheres, from the hidden governing power, a motion by which the first body was moved, that is, the highest sphere;
This philosopher held the eternity of the celestial spheres which the ancients imagined;