This page in one paragraph
On Dost's pages, two mutually exclusive statements are made about one and the same thing ("it is He and it is not He"), and we ask whether physics has a form that resembles this. This is the most crowded form in the Futuhat: 514 items, twelve themes. The row that stands closest is complementarity; but even that only "greets from a distance", because in physics the two pictures show up in separate setups, whereas in Dost the opposites stand together in a single thing at the same moment. The relational interpretation and identical particles remain at the same level; with identical particles the outcome looks similar but the reasons differ (in physics there are no individuals that can be labeled, in Dost unity belongs to being itself). We did not pair up closeness such as superposition, because it was only a similarity of words; and a few themes we did not look at on this page at all. What remains open is whether this difference points to something beyond complementarity, or whether Both-and is simply too general a column to be compared with physics.
What is this form?
In everyday life a thing is either "yes" or "no". Either it is inside or outside. Either it is you or other than you. The mind moves by this distinction; without it we could not even speak.
On Dost's pages, however, we often meet a manner of speech like this: there are two statements, they exclude each other, and both are said about the same thing. "Both this and that," or "neither this nor that." If one were true the other should be false; Dost holds both at once. While reading, the mind halts for a moment, because it is not asked to choose.
What we call Both-and ("both… and", "neither… nor") on this page is not the content of these sentences but their form: two excluding definitions, over a single thing. This is the most crowded form in the Futuhat. Among the 514 items we went through with reader agents, it appeared under twelve separate themes. It is precisely because of this crowd that care is needed: every odd saying looks like every other odd saying. Saying two mutually exclusive things about one thing is also a manner of speech seen in other traditions; so this form on its own is not specific to Dost. We too want to say "stands close" in physics only if we find a place that is truly distinctive. If we do not find one, we will write that too.
What does Dost say?
«In all the affairs you see or perceive, al-Haqq is "He and not He"» (c8k117, p. 331)
Here Dost says that in every affair we see and grasp, al-Haqq is both "He" and "not He". In the same section it is also related that imagination brings two opposites together. So "both He and not He" seems not like contrariness but like the familiar way of the matter.
The two statements are not lined up side by side; they stand together over a single thing. One does not cancel the other.
«I knew Allah by His gathering the two opposites in Himself» (c9k124, p. 186)
«No! Allah is the very identity of the two opposites» (c9k124, p. 186)
The first statement is al-Kharraz's, the second is Tajuddin al-Akhlati's. The first says Allah is one who "gathers" two opposites; the second corrects this: "not one who gathers, but the opposites themselves." Dost finds the second to be right.
The difference between them is subtle but great. In the one the opposites are inside a vessel, in the other they are the vessel itself. A reader might want to look in physics at this very distinction between "holding two things together" and "being two things".
«The image in the mirror is neither the same as the image of the person looking nor other than it» (c11k139, p. 227-228)
You see your face in a mirror. Whose face is it, if not yours? Yet you are not inside the mirror either. Dost states this stance as "neither this nor the other." Set against the "both… and" of the first two quotations, here there is "neither… nor."
The form stands in the same place, only its direction is reversed. Both "both" and "neither" point to the same impasse: of the two options, neither is enough on its own.
«Just as you speak truly if you say of existence only "there is one," so too you speak truly if you say "there are two."» (c5k64, p. 309-310)
In the same section a saying of al-Junayd is also related: «The color of water is the color of its vessel.» (c5k64, p. 309). Oneness is true, duality is true. Which one you say seems to depend on where you look from.
"Both are true" here is not a compromise but a matter of viewpoint. Where one holds, the other would be expected not to hold; yet both are counted as holding.
«The servant's prayer makes al-Haqq in a certain respect the servant's "possession"; al-Haqq's answering makes the servant al-Haqq's "possession"» (c6k81, p. 242)
The one who prays seems to bind al-Haqq to himself by his prayer; and al-Haqq, by His answering, binds the servant to Himself. The owner and the owned change places with each other. Dost calls this the "final degree" of al-Haqq's condescension to the servant. This reciprocity is stated at the level of the relation between Divinity and Lordship (ilah-Rabb), not at the level of the Essence; al-Haqq and the servant are not counted as equals.
The two sides define each other, and the roles are not fixed but rotate. The form seems less like "both… and" than like "by virtue of each other".
«The human being, however, is both creation and al-Haqq.» (c8k119, p. 378)
The sentence says that the human being is both created (creation) and al-Haqq. It is one of the shortest "both… and"s.
This sentence is separately discussed in the commentators' tradition; we did not undertake that reading, we only looked at the form of the sentence: one does not subtract the other. We also did not look at how the sentence stands in the Arabic.
What is there in physics?
Englert 1996 — Interference pattern and path information
You know the double-slit experiment: light or a particle passes through two slits, and a pattern of bright and dark lines appears on the screen. Englert asked this question: what happens to the pattern if we try to find out which slit the particle passed through? He gave the answer as an inequality, that is, an upper bound. How sharp the pattern is and how much "which path" information can be obtained cannot together exceed a certain limit. The sharper the pattern, the less path information; as path information increases, the pattern fades. This ties the "wave or particle" duality, once stated only in words, to a measure. In our notes this limit is written as V² + D² ≤ 1. The striking side is that the derivation does not rest on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle; that is, the limit is not a restatement of that principle. This is a theoretical result; the question "what is this an expression of" remains open as a matter of interpretation. [Englert 1996]
SEP 2024 — Copenhagen interpretation
This entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells of the first general attempt at interpreting quantum mechanics. The principal names are Bohr and Heisenberg, and also Born. The entry stresses that the two never fully agreed on how the mathematical framework was to be understood, and that neither of them himself used the name "Copenhagen interpretation"; the name was popularized later, by those who opposed this view. Among the shared ideas are listed the necessity of classical language in measurement, complementarity, and the giving of the measurement result in terms of probability; but these are not a single list of rules. This is not an experiment, it is a piece of history of interpretation and philosophy. What stops one is that the "official" interpretation, as it is known, is in fact not the view of a single person or text. [SEP: Copenhagen Interpretation]
SEP 2024 — Relational quantum mechanics
This too is an entry from the Stanford encyclopedia; not an experiment, but the presentation of an interpretation. The interpretation was put forward in 1996 and has drawn interest in recent years. Its starting point is this: the perplexity in quantum theory is not resolved by adding a new equation, a new fact, or an inaccessible reality; the theory proposes that we renew our framework of thought at its roots. According to the entry, the role of the "observer" in the traditional account can be played not only by large, classical bodies but by every physical system. Thus the value of a property is spoken of not on its own but together with the system it is relative to. This is a proposed interpretation; it cannot be told apart by experiment and is not accepted among physicists. The entry explains not that it is true but what it says. [SEP: Relational Quantum Mechanics]
SEP 2024 — Identity and individuality
The question is this: does quantum physics permit us to understand particles as separate individuals of whom we can say "this one" or "that one"? According to the entry, the view that became widespread at the time quantum theory was founded says that elementary particles cannot be counted as individuals in this sense. Following this, special logical systems that set up the concept of "identity" differently, systems that cannot count individuals, were developed. On the other hand, it has also been argued that quantum physics can nevertheless be reconciled with a metaphysics that speaks of individuals; only, in that case these individuals are so indistinguishable from one another that Leibniz's principle of the "identity of indiscernibles" is violated. This claim too has met with objection. The entry is not an experiment but a philosophical inquiry; the results are not certain, they are contested. What stops one is that the question "which is which" about two electrons can lose its meaning. [SEP: Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory]
What does the secondary literature say?
According to the SEP entry, in Ibn Arabi's briefest expression everything is "huwa/la huwa", that is, He/not He: real/not real, existence/nonexistence, face/veil. The entry explains this two-facedness through the concept of imagination (khayal, form): according to Ibn Arabi, the form brings the two sides together and is both the same as and different from them, so the image in the mirror is both the mirror and the reflected object, or neither the mirror nor the object. According to what the entry relays, in the eyes of reason a proposition is true or false, whereas imagination sees it as at once true and false, or as neither. This paragraph is not Dost's word, it is the secondary literature's account. [SEP: Ibn 'Arabi]
Looking side by side
Complementarity: greets from a distance
Complementarity, in physics, means that two mutually exclusive pictures of the same thing (wave, particle) appear in separate setups and that both are needed together.
What is shared: the two pictures exclude each other, yet both are necessary. What behaves like a wave and what behaves like a particle are used for the same thing; making one prominent makes the other fade. Dost's "it is He and it is not He" and the saying of the opposites by al-Kharraz and al-Akhlati remind us, from a distance, of the form of this impasse. [Englert 1996; SEP: Copenhagen Interpretation]
Where they part: in physics the two pictures appear in separate setups, and the boundary between them can be written with a number. In Dost the opposites stand in a single thing at the same moment, and there is no measure. The physicist says "I cannot measure both at once"; Dost says "both are true at once". This difference is not small; Bohr's complementarity rests on separate setups, in Dost the opposites are in a single thing at the same moment.
In physics, alongside the necessity there is a price (when one appears, the other is lost). Whether this price has a counterpart in Dost we could not work out; perhaps a reader will look for a price in the "neither… nor" sayings.
Open question: does the difference between Dost's "opposite in a single thing" and physics' "opposite in two setups" point to something beyond complementarity, or are they two different languages of the same bewilderment?
Relational interpretation: greets from a distance
What is shared: the parties define one another. In physics the value of a property is spoken of in terms of "relative to which system"; in Dost the servant's prayer makes al-Haqq, and al-Haqq's answering makes the servant, a "possession". The relation seems to come before the parties in the relation. [SEP: Relational Quantum Mechanics]
Where they part: in Dost the roles exchange places, in physics there is no such exchange. The relational interpretation is moreover a proposed interpretation; it cannot be told apart by experiment, nor is it accepted.
Where a reader might notice a difference: in the idea that "relation comes first". Its counterpart in Dost and its counterpart in physics may call for a separate round of reading; we did not go that far on this page.
Open question: do the reciprocal roles, without being matched to the relational interpretation, merit a separate round on their own, simply as the form "relation comes first"?
Identical particles: greets from a distance
What is shared: in both places the question "which is which" loses its meaning. In Dost unity and duality are true at once; in physics we cannot tell two electrons apart. [SEP: Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory]
Where they part: in physics the problem is the absence of individuals that can be labeled. In Dost, unity is ontological, that is, it belongs to being itself. There are two different reasons that look like the same outcome.
Where a reader might notice a difference: by looking at the idea of "indistinguishability" in the individuality debate. We did not carry this further here; for the subject of unity and wholeness in the Futuhat we have a separate page.
Open question: could the sentence "one is true and two is true" and the sentence "which of two electrons is which is meaningless" be two faces of the same bewilderment?
Other doors
"Neither existent nor nonexistent" and the intermediate degree, at 85 items, is the most crowded theme. It is tempting to think of a closeness with superposition (the state before measurement in which two possibilities enter the calculation together; "neither A nor B"), but we did not do so. On the Barzakh and Reason pages we also fell for the same temptation, and this third time as well we did not pair them, because it was only a similarity of words.
The subject of veil, light, seeing and knowing was dealt with on the Knowledge page, the subject of outward-inward and first-last on the Time page; we do not repeat it here. The subject of nearness, containment and movement was referred to the Reason and Time pages.
We did not look on this page at the themes "whose act is it", "transcendence and likening", and "mirror, form, shadow". In physics there is no question of "who owns the act"; the free-will debate is not physics. For transcendence and likening we reached the same conclusion on the Reason page. The questions to be asked about the image in the mirror are the work of a separate round.
Questions we are left with
- Does the difference between Dost's "opposite in a single thing" way of speaking and physics' "opposite in two setups" way of speaking point to something beyond complementarity?
- That 514 items are spread over twelve themes yet only one of them could be set side by side with physics: does this show that Both-and is a manner of speech specific to Dost, or that Both-and is too general a column to be compared with physics?
- Does the difference in direction between "both… and" and "neither… nor" (the example of the image in the mirror) find a counterpart in physics?
- Do the reciprocal roles, independently of the relational interpretation, deserve a round of their own?
What did we not do?
This page is not a reading summary, it is our reading framework. We read Dost from the Turkish section summaries; we did not compare it with the Arabic original or with the translation itself. Even in the places where a translation check was made, this was not an Arabic check. We did the merging of themes with agents; we checked every quotation against the source text, but the theme decisions are ours.
We have not written, and will not write, any closeness as "the same as this thing". We do not present Dost as having gone ahead of a physical theory, nor physics as a witness to Dost. Both-and is the most crowded form and one of the columns with the fewest physics pairings: that too is a result, and we have not hidden it. We do not understand Dost, but we do not give up trying to understand.