A Brief Overview of Early Cosmological Models
A historical reading guide to early cosmological pictures and the questions they tried to answer. Use their different ideas of order, motion, and origin to frame later discussions.
Read article →Texts, concepts, and context
How earlier questions shaped the programme
Ideas about time have been developed through astronomy, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and mathematical physics. This historical route places the Single Monad project within that wider conversation, with particular attention to Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology and the interpretation of its temporal vocabulary.
Terms such as day, eternity, motion, and creation can serve different purposes in different texts. A historical reading asks how a term functions in its own argument before comparing it with a modern quantity. Similar language can motivate a connection, but it does not by itself establish an identical theory or a technical anticipation.
The articles move from early cosmological models through Greek, Islamic, and later discussions of time to the books underlying the SMM/DTT programme. They provide context for the questions that recur in the mathematical work: unity and multiplicity, the relation of time to motion, and the possibility that observable order depends on a deeper process.
Competing accounts of time
Compare absolute, relational, cyclical, and motion-based approaches as historical arguments, attending to the problem each author or tradition was trying to resolve.
Ibn al-Arabi in context
Read temporal and cosmological terms through their textual setting, distinguishing literal duration, symbolic order, and metaphysical dependence before drawing connections with physics.
From interpretation to research
Trace how historical ideas motivate the Single Monad project while keeping the later mathematical constructions and empirical claims accountable to their own evidence.
Continue with the articles
All 220 articles →Time in Philosophy and Science, Introduction
Frame the major questions about time shared by philosophy and science: order, duration, change, and the present. Establish a vocabulary for comparing answers without collapsing their differences.
Read article →Time in Greek Philosophy
Explore Greek discussions of time through the relation between cosmos, motion, and number. Prepare a careful comparison with later Islamic and modern accounts.
Read article →Time in Earlier Islamic Philosophy
Introduce selected Islamic philosophical debates about time, motion, and creation. Place Ibn al-Arabi’s approach alongside these debates while retaining differences between philosophical and theological methods.
Read article →Time in Western Philosophy
Compare absolute, relational, and experiential approaches to time in Western philosophy. Use the comparison to clarify what a theory must mean when it calls time fundamental or emergent.
Read article →Introducing Ibn al-Arabi's View of Time
Introduce Ibn al-Arabi’s treatment of time as a relation associated with change and manifestation. Provide a bridge from the historical terminology to the later Single Monad interpretation.
Read article →Reading Volume I: time and creation
A reading route through the historical vocabulary that motivates the Single Monad framework.
Read article →Reading Ibn ‘Arabi — Time and Cosmology
A source-oriented entry point for the historical study underlying the later research program.
Read article →Keep following the question.
The glossary explains the vocabulary; the reading paths connect the ideas; the source register points to the original arguments.