of water, air, and earth are the mountains. For the mountains are the reservoirs for water, the combs for the air: they precipitate the noxious gases and purify it; they are the earth’s preserver: they preserve it from being transformed into a swamp, and from the encroachment of the sea. They are also the treasuries for other necessities of human life. In utter reverence he offers praise and thanks to the Maker of Glory and Kindness, Who made these great mountains as posts for the earth – the house of our life – in this way, and appointed them as the keepers of the treasuries of our livelihood.

The share of a scholar of natural science from this phrase would be this: he would think of the earthquakes and tremors which occur as the result of upheavals and fusions in the heart of the earth being calmed with the upthrust of mountains; that the emergence of mountains is the cause of the earth’s stable rotation on its axis and in its orbit and its not deviating in its annual rotation as a result of the convulsions of earthquakes; and that the anger and wrath of the earth is quieted through it breathing through the vents in the mountains. He would come to believe completely, and would exclaim: “All wisdom is God’s!”

Another example:

The heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder.(21:30)

A scholar untainted by the study of philosophy would explain the words “joined together” like this: while the skies were shining and cloudless and the earth was dry and without life and incapable of giving birth, the skies were opened up with rain and the earth with vegetation, and all living beings were created through a sort of marriage and impregnation. To do this was the work of One so Powerful and Glorious that the face of the earth is merely a small garden of His, while the clouds veiling the face of the skies, sponges for watering it. The scholar understands this and prostrates before the tremendousness of His power.

A searching philosopher would explain the same words in this way: while at the start of creation the heavens and earth were a formless mass, each consisting of wet dough-like matter without benefit, offspring, or creatures, the All-Wise Creator both rolled them out and expanded them into a beautiful, beneficial form, and made them the source of numerous adorned creatures. The philosopher would stand in wonder before the breadth of His wisdom.

A modern philosopher would explain the words thus: originally, our globe and the other planets which form the solar system were fused together in the form of an undifferentiated dough. Then the All-Powerful