understood before it existed.

At that point it would be nonexistent, not existent. To know it as existing would be ignorance, while knowing that it will exist is precisely what they sought to escape.

If they say:

“We know that when the particular, individual thing occurs, the eclipse occurs, even though we do not know when that thing occurs.”

The response is:

Such knowledge is possible only if its object is universal: we know that when that particular circumstance occurs in that particular manner, the eclipse occurs. This knowledge is universal, not particular.

In short, a particular is particular only if it is confined to a single individual and its very conception precludes its applying to more than one thing. If it is not something permanent, but something that comes into being, it cannot be known as it actually is unless its particular time is known.

In that case, knowledge of it would precede its appointed time. Otherwise, if one knows that whenever such-and-such occurs in such-and-such a manner, the eclipse occurs, this is universal knowledge.

Even if one knows that it must occur, this knowledge remains universal with respect to time, since its conception does not preclude its applying to different times. Thus, it has been known only in a universal manner whose conception does not preclude shared applicability.

Despite this, they say:

“Not even an atom’s weight in the heavens or the earth escapes his knowledge.”

This is a fallacy. Rather, he has no knowledge whatsoever of any particular events that come into being. They escape him: he does not know whether they have occurred or not, for the very conception of a universal, insofar as