[The World (continued)]
فَالأَعْيَانُ مَا لَهُ قِيَامٌ بِذَاتِهِ، وَهُوَ إِمَّا مُرَكَّبٌ وَهُوَ الْجِسْمُ، أَوْ غَيْرُ مُرَكَّبٍ كَالجَوْهَرِ، وَهُوَ الجُزْءُ الَّذِي لاَ يَتَجَزَّأُ،
010- A substance is that which is self-subsistant (qiyyām bi-dhātihi), and it is either a composite (murakkab), that is, a body (jism); or not composite, like the atom1 (jawhar), which is the [indivisible] part that can no longer be divided.
- Atom (from the Greek atomos ‘indivisible’, based on a– ‘not’ + temnein ‘to cut’) is normally used for jawhar a metaphysical construct which can also be rendered as essense or substance depending on context. In this text jawhar would be better rendered as a particle or even an elementary particle. In Physics an atom includes any of numerous subatomic particles, namely, electrons, protons and neutrinos. In Scientific Arabic an atom is dhara and a particle is jusiyyam. Here the author has jawāhir which is particles plural however it works best for the sentence to use the singular form. Later scholars would make a distinction between jawhar and al-jawhar al-fard namely an elementary particle. However, for the sake of consistency with other works on Kalam and Islamic philosophy we used the word atom in keeping with its Greek origin of being the indivisible particle.