CHAPTER VII
Implications for Modern Physics
This existence that we know in practice,
is not like the existence that we know by unveiling.
The mind does not know it, and thinking does not recognize it,
but remembrance (dhikr) will show it, while the secret will hide it
from the minds that are veiled by habits:
that is why they do not recognize what the secrets[121] understand.
(Diwan: 229)
As with most cosmological hypotheses, past and present, testing Ibn Arabi's cosmological model and his understanding of time is not easy. Although a preliminary test is simply its ability to resolve some of the standard paradoxes surrounding time, as we shall shortly see below, more credible tests may not be very easy to perform, and incontrovertible tests may be inaccessible since Ibn Arabi frequently reiterates, beginning with the very Introduction to the
Futuhat, that his most distinctive cosmological insights are ultimately based on forms of inspiration, 'unveiling', and divine knowledge that are beyond the level of the ordinary human intelligence.
So in this final chapter we shall discuss some of the consequences and possible methods to test the Single Monad Model that we outlined in Chapter VI. Some persisting paradoxes in current models will be discussed, such as the historical Zeno's paradoxes and the recent EPR paradox (sections 4 and 6 below). We shall then go on to discuss some of the apparent consequences of Ibn Arabi's cosmological model for various principles of physics, cosmology and philosophy. We have already seen that in this model, space and time are truly unified, and that there is a drastically different conception of motion. Most other basic properties of matter, like mass, density, softness and transparency, will be also affected, suggesting the eventual possibility of conceiving a kind of 'science' dealing with certain phenomena of mysticism and the supernatural. In addition to that, in this cosmological model, causality itself will have a different sense, which would enable new perspectives for reconciling cosmology and theology.
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
