law of evolution (tekâmül). Humanity, too, inclines towards perfection and desires progress since it is one of the world's fruits and parts. This desire grows and develops through the meeting of minds and accumulation of ideas, and the accumulation of ideas expands through basic principles being perfected. Basic principles being perfected fertilises the seeds of the physical sciences by sowing them in the ground from the loins of creation cultivated by the times. As for the seeds, they sprout and grow through gradual experimentation.

In consequence, there are numerous questions that are now obvious and have become common knowledge, but in the past were completely theoretical and hidden and in need of proof. For we see that thanks to the perfecting of principles and means and the discoveries of combined minds, many matters of geography, astronomy, chemistry and applied geometry are not unknown even to the children of today; they play with them like toys, but to Ibn Sina [^5] and his likes they were theoretical and hidden. Ibn Sina was like the father of science, and in respect of his acute intelligence, powerful thought, mature wisdom, and breadth of imaginative power, would prove far superior if compared with even hundreds of today's sages. He was not lacking anything, for he was a son of his times; he was made deficient by the deficiency of the times. Isn't it clear that if the discovery of the New World, which was the reason for the learned Columbus' [^6] fame, had remained to today, any caique owner, the least worthy of sea captains, would have been capable of making the New World the neighbour of the Old. A small boat and a compass would have been sufficient substitute for the wide knowledge and braving of hazards of the earlier explorer. Attention should also be paid to the following truth. The matters are of two sorts:

[^5]:Ibn Sīnā; Abū 'Alī al-Ḥusayn b. 'Abd Allāh b. Sīnā (d. 428/1037). The pre-eminent philosopher and physician. He was born near Bukhara and died at Hamadan.

[^6]:Christopher Columbus (d. 1506), the explorer and navigator who made four voyages across the Atlantic to America under the patronage of the Spanish monarchs. He was born in Genoa and died in Spain.

The meeting of minds is influential on the first; indeed, it is