 Among the twenty discussions of the Incoherence, sixteen are concerned with positions held in the falâsifa’s metaphysics (ilâhiyyât) and four with positions that appear in their natural sciences (tabî’iyyât). The 17th discussion on causality will be analyzed below. The longest and most substantial discussion is the first, which deals with Avicenna’s and al-Fârâbî’s arguments in favor of the world’s pre-eternity (Hourani 1958, Marmura 1959). Al-Ghazâlî denies that this position can be demonstratively proven and draws from arguments that were earlier developed by anti-Aristotelian critics such as the Christian John Philoponus (Yahyâ l-Nahwî, c.490–c.570) of Alexandria. Philoponus’ arguments, most importantly those that deny the possibility of an infinite number of events in the past, had entered the Arabic discourse on the world’s creation earlier during the 9th century (Davidson 1987, 55–56, 86–116, 366–75).