any evidence for it, whether scriptural or rational. Some people may suppose this, but their supposition has no supporting evidence. Rather, many people know, on the basis of scriptural [and] rational evidence, that the world does not have six directions, but only two: above and below.

In general, everyone necessarily knows that a spherical body can exist and that it does not have six directions, but rather an upper direction at its circumference and a lower direction at its center. Clearly, no rational person would say that an existent alongside this body must occupy one of six directions surrounding it, since it has no six directions. Rather, only one direction surrounds it. Thus, whatever is separate from it can occupy only one direction relative to it, not six.

These people therefore say that affirming two existents outside these two categories is necessarily false: either one inheres in the other, sharing its location, or it is distinct and separate from it, whether that separation is in one direction or several.

Once this is understood, the judgment is that this position—which affirms two existents that neither share a location nor are separate from one another—is necessarily false, and its invalidity is known by innate disposition. This is the view of the great majority of the leading scholars of Islam and people of knowledge, as they have explicitly stated in passages