  The question of cosmic beginning has always attracted considerable attention
from serious thinkers past and present. This article examines Ibn Sina's
proposed solution to the vexed problem that given an eternally existing world
and one eternally existing God, how the two necessarily can possibly co-exist
without having the perfect, simple unity of God destroyed by contact with the
multiplicity of material things. Both Ibn Sina's arguments as well as the
counter-arguments of his critics are analyzed and assessed.
