 In his Enumeration of the Sciences Fârâbî gives a description of “the divine science” (corresponding to Aristotle’s word “theology” in Metaphysics VI,1, and his description of wisdom as “divine science” in Metaphysics I,2), crowning his previous descriptions of mathematics and physics. Here Fârâbî says the divine science is divided into three parts. The first part investigates “beings and the things that belong to them inasmuch as they are beings”: this reflects Aristotle’s programmatic declaration in Metaphysics IV,1. The second part, says Fârâbî, investigates (i.e., establishes) the principles of the particular sciences, and also investigates (i.e., refutes) false opinions of earlier philosophers about the principles of these sciences, among which Fârâbî mentions the opinion that mathematical objects are separately existing substances: the latter would reflect Metaphysics  XIII–XIV,[7]  but Fârâbî is probably also thinking of the refutation in Metaphysics IV,3–8 of people who deny the principle of noncontradiction. (There is little support in Aristotle for the idea that metaphysics establishes principles of other sciences, except for universal axioms like noncontradiction and excluded middle, but this idea can be found in late ancient commentators. Aristotle does accept cases where one science can establish principles that are assumed in another science—for instance, number theory establishes principles that are assumed in mathematical music theory, and geometry establishes principles that are used in astronomy and optics—and Porphyry says that metaphysics is related to physics in this  way.)[8]  The third part of the “divine science”—and here Fârâbî has much more to say—shows that there are beings which neither are bodies nor exist in bodies, that these beings are not one but many, and not infinitely but finitely many, and that they do not all share the same degree of perfection, but rather some are superior and others inferior. This then leads to the conclusion that these beings separate from bodies culminate in some first being which has nothing prior to it and thus has no further cause of its existence. And, Fârâbî says, this science shows that this being also has no partner (nothing sharing its degree of perfection) and no contrary; that there is no multiplicity in it in any way, and that it is one, being, and true in a stronger sense than everything else; and that it is the first cause which bestows being, unity and truth on everything else. Then, Fârâbî says, this science shows that this being deserves the name “God”, and satisfies the rest of the divine attributes; and then it shows how other beings arise from God and how they form an ordered hierarchy (some beings arise from God directly, others indirectly through these), explains how God acts on other things, and refutes the false opinion that God is responsible for evils. The description of this third part of the “divine science” reads like an analytical table of contents for much of what Fârâbî does in his Principles of the Opinions of the People of the Perfect City and Political Regime, but it is not closely related to anything in Aristotle. At best, it is an enormously expanded version of some things that Aristotle covers very quickly in Metaphysics XII,6–10: XII,6 shows that there are separate incorporeal substances, XII,7 justifies the name “god”, XII,8 argues that there is a finite multiplicity of such substances but only one first among them, and then XII,10 identifies this first principle with the good itself and argues (very sketchily) that it is the cause of good order in the cosmos and that there is no evil principle contrary to it. Aristotle does not seem to say in Metaphysics XII that the first principle is one, being, and true in a stronger sense than everything else, or that it bestows being, unity and truth on everything else (the best support for this view might be Metaphysics II,1 993b23–31). But the more serious problem is that Fârâbî here just gives a list of the things that the science will investigate or prove, without explaining why these tasks all belong to the same science, and without explaining what principles the science can draw on to demonstrate all these conclusions. His account here looks like a wish-list of what he would like the science to do, especially as a Greek scientific alternative to Islamic kalâm, but it does not explain how a science can do all this. Rather than solving the inherited problem of how a single science can meet the different descriptions that Aristotle gives of wisdom or first philosophy, he aggravates the problem by adding more things that the science must  do.[9]