During his time, wars took place between Muslims and infidels.

During his time, wars took place between Muslims and infidels.” “Yesterday, school was closed,” and so on. In general, the common understanding is that all bodies occupy space. Rather, most people generalize this judgment and imagine that there is no existent without a place, as the simple minded imagine that God the Almighty also has a place in the heavens or beyond them, which, of course, is not correct, and this will be discussed further at the appropriate place.

The very same line of thought is also applied to time and its relations to things and phenomena. Naturally, the philosopher who would know and make known the realities of things also must answer this question: “What is the reality of space and time?”, especially since one encounters these concepts in many of the problems of philosophy, such as in the previous lesson where space and time were introduced as properties of material things, and in the discussions of theology we deny that God the Exalted occupies space or time.

The first difficulty which exists with regard to the explanation of the reality of space and time, and turns this explanation into a formidable problem, is that space and time cannot be experienced by the senses and they never fall into the traps of our sensory organs. They are not seen by the eye, nor touched, nor are they perceived by any other sense, although sensible things are related to them such that they are considered to be of the sensible material world.

It is because of precisely this aspect that Kant presented them as mental channels for knowledge of entified phenomena, and not as objective entified things themselves; and another group of thinkers considered them to be illusory and imaginary. On the other hand, a group of philosophers who could not deny their objective existence, and who also could not believe them to be material existents, held that they are immaterial things.

Finally, most philosophers have considered them to be material accidents whose existences are established through the joint effort of the senses and reason. Naturally, each group advanced a reason or reasons for its own view, and criticized the reasons of the others. Ṣadr al-Muta’allihīn affirms the view about space which is attributed to Plato, that is, space is immaterial, although there is room for doubt about the veracity of this attribution to Plato and it needs to be researched further.