ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Fifty-Two: The Potential and the Actual Introduction Man has always been a witness to changes and alterations in bodies and in souls attached to matter, so that it may be claimed that there is no material existent nor existent attached to matter which is not subject to some kind of change or alteration.

In the appropriate place the necessity of substantial motion will be proved for all material things, implying that changes in their accidents are subordinate to substantial motion. On the other hand, the scope of the alteration of an existent into another existent such that each of them possesses an independent whatness becomes so broad that it may be supposed that each material existent can change into another material existent.

Hence, from the earliest times it has been held that there is a single principle for the world which changes into different things with the transformations which occur in this principle. Many philosophers have held that the only exceptions to this doctrine are the celestial bodies. In other words, the subjects to which this doctrine applies are limited to elemental bodies.

Aside from the invalidity of the assumption of unchangeable celestial spheres ( aflāk ), by rational proof one cannot deny the possibility that there might be a kind of material existent in some unknown corner of the world which cannot be changed into another material existent, although this possibility seems extremely weak and farfetched. We know that in modern physics the commonly accepted theory is that matter and energy and even types of energy can change into one another.

Despite the generality of alteration in relation to all material things, and the breadth of the scope of changes, practical experience shows that not every thing may be directly changed into anything else. Even if all material existents could be changed into one another, this could never be accomplished directly and without mediation. For example, a stone cannot directly change into a plant or an animal.

In order to be transformed into a plant or animal it must go through several stages and alterations must take place until it is prepared for such transformations. Such thoughts have led philosophers to think that only an existent can change into another existent when it possesses the potentiality of the existence of the other.