This chapter explicates a distinctive argument that Avicenna offers for the existence of nature as a causal power in bodies. In doing that, the author shows the argument has two main targets: the Aristotelian tradition on the hand, who thought that the existence of nature, as an intrinsic principle of movement, was self-evident, and the Ash ͑arite occasionalist theological tradition on the other, who were anti-realists about all creaturely efficacious power, locating all efficacy instead in an extrinsic transcendent agent. The (...) argument draws on two key premises: a regularity of events thesis and a version of the principle of sufficient reason. Based on these two premises, Avicenna offers a response to the issue in a way that attempts to preserve something from both traditions. For it allows, with the Ash ͑aris, the causal involvement of a transcendent being in the production of some effect or range of effects from some body; and yet still maintains, against them and with the Aristotelians, that the effect must occur in virtue of some property of that body, where the property in question makes a real causal contribution to the effect’s occurrence. This amounts to a properly Avicennian account. (shrink)

This article intends to review William Dembski's recent monograph entitledBeing as Communion: A Metaphysics of Information, in which he establishes an entire information-centric metaphysics. This viewpoint is compared with al-Ghazālī’s perspective, a Muslim philosophical theologian from the Medieval period. It is concluded that what Dembski defines as information, which for him is the ontological basis of the natural world, seems remarkably close to al-Ghazālī’s notion of God's will and omnipotence. This article is an explorative comparison of their metaphysical frameworks that (...) are discussed in light of modern scientific developments, highlighting their differences and similarities. (shrink)