What are we doing here?
We are setting two things side by side and looking. On one side stands the Futuhat al-Makkiyya of Dost, that is, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165-1240, a Sufi thinker born in Andalusia); on the site it appears as 18 volumes and 226 sections. "Dost" is the name the site gives him. On the other side stands a hundred years of accumulated quantum physics and today's experiments.
This page is not an announcement and not an invitation. It shows a table at which we sat down and looked together. The sentences of both sides lie on the table, in case someone who looks notices something.
Why are we doing this?
Because both sides, each in its own language, stand in the same place: a place that does not fit within reason.
The physicist Feynman wrote that one can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics [Feynman 1965]. The field's own survey also shows that its basic questions are still fiercely debated [Schlosshauer 2013]. On Dost's side there is a sentence like this:
«We were bewildered, and so was He.» (c15k169, p. 416)
This is half of a poem; the second line goes: «We were bewildered, and so was He / Whoever is bewildered has not walked on.» (c15k169, p. 416) We do not attribute the saying to al-Haqq or draw a conclusion from it; we only show the poem in its entirety.
On the physics side, physicists of the founding generation shrink from saying "we understand" [Feynman 1965; Bohr 2007]. On Dost's side, too, the reader is left in bewilderment at the places in the Futuhat that do not fit within reason. To us this seemed a sufficient ground for looking side by side. Nothing more than that.
Who read Dost?
We read: Murat (the owner of this site) and Claude, two readers sitting side by side. We read the Futuhat through the site's Turkish section summaries, all 226 sections from beginning to end; we divided the reading among reader agents (details on the Method page). We did not look at the Arabic original. We made a comparison with a translation, but that too is not an Arabic check. We need to say this at the outset, because everything below stays within this limit.
Our stance
We do not understand Dost. Nor do we give up trying to understand.
This is not an ornament of humility, it is the method of the work. When we say "does not fit within reason," we are not charging Dost with a defect; we mean the places where, as we read, our reason alone is not enough. In Dost's way of speaking we found places that do not fit within reason. In physics, too, we found phenomena that do not fit within reason. Then we looked at the manner of their not fitting and asked: could it perhaps be the same thing? We do not know the answer. That is why a question stands everywhere in place of an answer.
What did we look at?
In Dost we chose sixteen "forms of the irrational." A form means not a content but a mold of expression: whatever the subject, the way the speech strains reason. We found the first fourteen while reading the Futuhat from beginning to end, and the last two (Multiplicity and Reciprocal transformation) while reading a second time, from a new window. Each has a page of its own.
Section numbers in the quotations are read as follows: c10k133 means volume 10, section 133; "p." is the page number. The section number is linked to the site.
- Both-and (both this and that, neither this nor that): two statements that exclude each other are said at once about the same thing. Example: «He is neither the seer nor other than him!» (c11k135, p. 65-67)
- Non-repetition (no repetition): nothing comes a second time.
- Continuity: continuity may be the appearance of another structure underneath.
- Relation: a thing cannot be defined before its relation.
- Viewpoint: the manner of looking determines what is seen.
- Wholeness: a part cannot be thought apart from the whole.
- Cause: there is a link, but no cause-and-effect instrument carrying the link.
- Containment: the container fits inside what it contains.
- Time: time contracts, and the "now" stands between two extremes.
- Knowledge: knowledge, like a veil, covers the very thing that is known.
- Reason: what reason deems impossible turns out to be real.
- Indistinguishability: two things are neither the same nor different.
- Inside-outside: neither inside nor outside.
- Bewilderment: where knowing arrives is not understanding but bewilderment.
- Multiplicity: the same pattern being found in other places, in other worlds as well; one person being in more than one form or place.
- Reciprocal transformation: if A looks at B, B also looks at A; the reciprocity between the servant's belief and the self-disclosure of al-Haqq. (This reciprocity is read at whatever level it is spoken between al-Haqq and the servant; the asymmetry between the Necessary and the contingent is not erased.)
After Multiplicity and Reciprocal transformation, we also saw other patterns that fit neither of these forms but are still hard for everyday reason. We only listed them, on a separate page: Other patterns.
How is each page read?
Every form page follows the same order. First Dost: we quote the sentence, explain plainly what it says, and draw attention to the form of the speech. Then physics: we describe the relevant experiment and theory in our own words, first the experiment, then the theory, then the interpretation, separating which is certain and which is debated. Last comes the side-by-side look: what is common, where they part, where someone who looks might notice something, and which question is left to us.
We express closeness in five phrases; from nearest to farthest: "stand close," "greet each other from a distance," "walk separate roads," "we did not look at this door," "tempting, but we did not do it." Their counterparts in the old working notes: distinct and moderate correspond to "stand close"; weak-moderate and weak correspond to "greet each other from a distance." The general conclusion page was written in the new phrases.
What came out?
The result is not large. There are rows that stand close, but they are few; for each, the place where they part is also written. In time and in the direction of continuity, the two sides seemed to walk separate roads; we wrote that down too. In some forms there was only a resemblance of words; we left those aside on purpose. This count is not a verdict, it is the present state of our looking.
What do we not do?
- We do not end with a claim of equivalence. Every page closes with a question.
- We do not say that physics confirms Dost or that Dost explains physics; in either direction.
- We do not add our own words to Dost's words; the quotations stand as they are.
- We do not fit physics to Dost; where there is divergence, we write that too.
- This is not a reading summary, it is our own reading framework.
Closeness may be a matter of the heart. But here it remains only a question.
Pages that stand beside it
If a word catches you, the Glossary opens it in a sentence; the first place each term appears in the text is linked there. There is also the Compute and see page, where we calculated four things on the physics side ourselves and turned them into figures. The account of this work itself, what we read, what we tested, which pairings did not pass review, we wrote openly on the Audit status page. There is also a separate page where we read the words imagination and barzakh side by side with decoherence: Imagination and barzakh. The hardest places that did not fit on the form pages we gathered, without comment, on the What did not fit on the pages page. With the same eye we also read the Fusus; its listing is on the Forms in the Fusus page. While rereading the Futuhat, we only listed the patterns that fit none of the forms, on the Other patterns page. How much of our pairings could be read from structure alone, we described in the blind-pairing trial on the Method page.