plants from the earth, and similar things.

It is known through the senses that the fruit itself comes into being after not having existed; the same is true of human beings and other things. As Allah Most High says:

“Does man not remember that We created him before, while he was nothing?”
[Maryam: 67]

“He said, ‘So it will be. Your Lord says, “It is easy for Me; I created you before, when you were nothing.”’”
[Maryam: 9]

It is known that these created things were created from other things: a human being from a drop of semen, a bird from an egg, fruit from a tree, a tree from a fruit stone, and an ear of grain from a grain.

It is also known that what each was created from has been transformed and ceased to exist. The grain that produced seven ears no longer remains a grain, nor does anything of it remain; rather, it has been transformed.

People have disputed this point. Some speculative theologians said: “What we have here are bodies and substances passing from one state to another, such as coming together after being separated, or becoming separated after being together. These substances persist, but their attributes and accidents have changed.”

They denied that the very nature of the entities that subsist in themselves had changed and that their essences had thereby been transformed, maintaining instead that only their attributes had changed. This is based on the view that bodies are composed of indivisible atoms.

These theologians say: “What is known through the senses and by necessity is only the coming into being of accidents and attributes. As for the coming into being of any body that subsists in itself, we know it only through inference.”