Argument#3
Statement No. 3
Attraction, natural inclination, and resistance to motion
Explanations and summaries are editorial material. Consult the source to verify the original wording.
Faithful reading
Is it that you have forgotten your power of attraction? You want to give the body a different kind of motion, and you are aware of its resistance to that motion. This is your way of thinking, although it is false; its explanation will follow in Chapter II.
In our view, the natural inclination of bodies resists motion in the opposite direction, and this is their aversion to that contrary motion. This is your supposition, while ancient philosophy supports the reverse: in every body there is some kind of inclination, whether straight or spherical. It will certainly resist any tendency contrary to its own and will obey one that agrees with it. For example, throwing a stone and making it fall. Its falsification will come in Chapter III, by the Grace of Allah.
In our view, all bodies observed so far have shown a tendency of leaning. It is not necessary that it should be present in every body. The tendency of the power of centralization is not found in some of them, and there is no need to be worried about that.
Secondly, this last statement does not put a seal on the whole truth of modern astronomy. Its explanation will follow. In Statement No. 8, the point under dispute is not your own view but Newton's attraction.
In our view, the natural inclination of bodies resists motion in the opposite direction, and this is their aversion to that contrary motion. This is your supposition, while ancient philosophy supports the reverse: in every body there is some kind of inclination, whether straight or spherical. It will certainly resist any tendency contrary to its own and will obey one that agrees with it. For example, throwing a stone and making it fall. Its falsification will come in Chapter III, by the Grace of Allah.
In our view, all bodies observed so far have shown a tendency of leaning. It is not necessary that it should be present in every body. The tendency of the power of centralization is not found in some of them, and there is no need to be worried about that.
Secondly, this last statement does not put a seal on the whole truth of modern astronomy. Its explanation will follow. In Statement No. 8, the point under dispute is not your own view but Newton's attraction.
Easy explanation
The paragraph immediately before Statement 3 says that a body does not naturally prefer to go down, up, forward, or backward. Instead, it proposes a hidden ability in the body that resists a motion forced on it. The English edition calls this supposed ability the “.” Statement 3 asks whether that explanation is really the right way to understand the resistance.
Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) begins by bringing back into the discussion. His question is: when you try to make a body move in a different way and you notice that it resists, have you forgotten the attraction that your own account already accepts? He says that the explanation being used is false and that he will discuss it more fully in Chapter II.
Here, simply means that a body does not easily follow the new motion being imposed on it. The important question is not whether resistance is noticed. The question is what explains it. Statement 3 is comparing two different ways of explaining that resistance.
Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) then presents the idea of a . In easy words, this means that a body is said to have its own tendency to move in a certain way. If someone tries to make it move in a contrary way, that existing tendency would resist the change. If the new motion agrees with its own tendency, the body would follow it more readily.
The statement connects this idea with ancient philosophy. It says that every body was considered to have some kind of inclination, described here as either straight or spherical. The main point is simple: the body's own tendency is said to oppose a contrary tendency and to agree with a matching one. Statement 3 is reporting this older way of explaining why a body may resist one kind of motion but accept another.
The stone example is meant to make this contrast easier to picture. A stone can be thrown by an outside action, and it can also be described as tending to fall. The statement uses this example to separate a motion imposed on a body from the direction the body is said to prefer by its own inclination. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says the fuller refutation will come in Chapter III.
There is also an important limit in the wording. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says that the bodies observed so far show a tendency of leaning, but he does not say that this must be proved for every possible body without exception. So the statement distinguishes what has been observed from a claim about absolutely every body.
He then makes a similar point about the proposed power of centralization. The statement says that this supposed tendency is not found in some bodies and that this need not cause worry. The immediate lesson is that the argument does not have to force exactly the same hidden property onto every body.
The second part of Statement 3 narrows the claim even more. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says that this last point by itself does not prove or disprove the whole of modern astronomy. More explanation is still to come. He also says that the point of dispute in Statement No. 8 is Newton's attraction, not simply the other person's own private idea.
For an ordinary reader, the safest way to read this statement is to keep its terms separate. “Attraction,” “natural inclination,” “resistance to motion,” and the source's “power of centralization” are different pieces of the argument being compared. Statement 3 is mainly asking which idea is being used to explain a body's resistance, while postponing the larger arguments to later chapters.
Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) begins by bringing back into the discussion. His question is: when you try to make a body move in a different way and you notice that it resists, have you forgotten the attraction that your own account already accepts? He says that the explanation being used is false and that he will discuss it more fully in Chapter II.
Here, simply means that a body does not easily follow the new motion being imposed on it. The important question is not whether resistance is noticed. The question is what explains it. Statement 3 is comparing two different ways of explaining that resistance.
Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) then presents the idea of a . In easy words, this means that a body is said to have its own tendency to move in a certain way. If someone tries to make it move in a contrary way, that existing tendency would resist the change. If the new motion agrees with its own tendency, the body would follow it more readily.
The statement connects this idea with ancient philosophy. It says that every body was considered to have some kind of inclination, described here as either straight or spherical. The main point is simple: the body's own tendency is said to oppose a contrary tendency and to agree with a matching one. Statement 3 is reporting this older way of explaining why a body may resist one kind of motion but accept another.
The stone example is meant to make this contrast easier to picture. A stone can be thrown by an outside action, and it can also be described as tending to fall. The statement uses this example to separate a motion imposed on a body from the direction the body is said to prefer by its own inclination. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says the fuller refutation will come in Chapter III.
There is also an important limit in the wording. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says that the bodies observed so far show a tendency of leaning, but he does not say that this must be proved for every possible body without exception. So the statement distinguishes what has been observed from a claim about absolutely every body.
He then makes a similar point about the proposed power of centralization. The statement says that this supposed tendency is not found in some bodies and that this need not cause worry. The immediate lesson is that the argument does not have to force exactly the same hidden property onto every body.
The second part of Statement 3 narrows the claim even more. Imam Ahmad Raza (rahmatullahi alayh) says that this last point by itself does not prove or disprove the whole of modern astronomy. More explanation is still to come. He also says that the point of dispute in Statement No. 8 is Newton's attraction, not simply the other person's own private idea.
For an ordinary reader, the safest way to read this statement is to keep its terms separate. “Attraction,” “natural inclination,” “resistance to motion,” and the source's “power of centralization” are different pieces of the argument being compared. Statement 3 is mainly asking which idea is being used to explain a body's resistance, while postponing the larger arguments to later chapters.
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