LECTURE BY MAGNUS BRANDT NIELSEN: GREEK ROOTS, ARABIC BRANCHES: THE CONCEPT OF NATURE IN ARABIC PHILOSOPHY

This lecture examines how the Arabic term ṭabīʿa (“nature”) – which became the standard translation of the Greek phusis – acquired its philosophical meaning during the ninth century Graeco–Arabic translation movement. In pre-Islamic and Qurʾānic usage, the root ṭ–b–ʿ conveyed ideas such as “corrosion,” “sealing,” or “impressing,” referring to divine acts of determination rather than to a formative and internal principle of motion. With the arrival of Greek scientific and philosophical works, especially Aristotle’s Physics, a markedly different conceptual vocabulary for speaking about the natural world entered Arabic. In the lecture, I will place particular emphasis on these Greek sources and on how early philosophers such as al-Kindī (d. 256/873) and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 313/925) reinterpreted phusis within an Islamic intellectual framework. Their engagement did not simply borrow Greek ideas; it transformed them. In this encounter between Greek natural philosophy, Arabic language, and Qurʾānic theology, ṭabīʿa emerged not only as a translation of “nature,” but as a newly forged philosophical concept.

Magnus Brandt Nielsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern Denmark and a member of the Quranatura research group. His project investigates the historical development of the Arabic concept of nature up to the fourth/tenth century. He has an academic background in philosophy, the history of religions, and philology, and completed his M.A. in 2024 with a thesis examining conceptions of nature and plants in Platonic thought across Greek and Arabic traditions.

Online participation

The lecture can be attended both in person and online. Registration only needed for online participation. Register here.