Abstract

The recent rediscovery of Basrian Mu'tazili kalam texts from the tenth and eleventh centuries provides us a wealth of information about their atomistic cosmology. This puts historians of kalam cosmology in a situation similar to that of historians of Presocratic cosmology, for, even with these rediscovered texts, kalam historians only have disconnected fragments about the cosmological views of mutakallimun of the late eight and ninth centuries, when the subject matter and scope of kalam cosmology was set. I propose the the approach of Presocratic historians is relevant to kalam historians. In particular, they need to find the research program of the early mutakallimun, and to study the kalam cosmology of the rediscovered texts in order to illuminate the activity of the early mutakallimun. An analysis of the titles of now-lost works by the early mutakallimun, and other evidence, reveals that the problems of the constitution of matter and its attributes, the nature of life, and causality formed their research program. These problems also figured in their discussions with Dualists and the natural philosophers, who were eighth century representatives of Hellenistic cosmology. ;The second section of the dissertation undertakes an analysis of the atomistic cosmology of the Basrian Mu'tazili mutakallimun of the tenth and eleventh centuries. An examination of the linguistic and epistemological aspects of their atomism reveals that they, with their counterparts from the Baghdadi Mu'tazili and Ash'ari kalam schools, held a minimal parts atomism which shares many features with Epicurean atomism. In light of this, I re-examine fragments of the eighth and ninth century mutakallimun and conclude that they too held a minimal parts atomism. This conclusion solves the riddle of early kalam atoms, which had hitherto been considered to be unextended points. I suggest that 'length', 'breadth', 'depth', and 'magnitude' have different meanings in a minimal parts theory and in a theory of continuous magnitudes, and that statements by the early mutakallimun supportive of unextended atoms need to be understood in the context of a minimal parts theory