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Al-Farabi

Al-Farabi's cosmology is ambiguous on the eternity of the world: the emanation from the First Cause is logically necessary and timeless, yet the sublunary world is subject to generation and corruption in time. Time is real and linear for the physical world; the superlunary emanation is outside time. Deterministic: the emanation proceeds by necessity from the First Cause through the intellects.

Al-Farabi

Finite, substantival. The Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmos: concentric spheres from the sublunary region to the outermost sphere. Space is real within the created order but does not extend beyond the outermost heaven.

Al-Farabi

Sublunary matter is hylomorphic — composites of prime matter and form, subject to generation and corruption. The celestial spheres are material in a refined sense (fifth element / aether). Matter is conserved through elemental transmutation.

Al-Farabi

The human observer is an embodied rational soul whose highest perfection is conjunction (ittisal) with the Active Intellect — the tenth emanated intellect. In this conjunction the individual intellect participates in cosmic-ordering intelligence. Plural observers, each capable of intellectual perfection. Metaphysical agency is Cosmic-ordering: the First Cause acts by necessity.

Al-Farabi

The celestial spheres transmit causal influence downward through necessary emanation. Energy is finite within the physical cosmos and conserved — the causal chain from the First through the intellects to sublunary matter is unbroken but irreversible in the downward direction.

Al-Farabi

Intelligible forms are eternally present in the Active Intellect. Human souls acquire knowledge by abstracting forms from phantasms (Aristotelian epistemology). Whether personal identity is conserved after death is contested in al-Farabi's thought: the virtuous achieve a quasi-immortal intellectual existence, but the ignorant may simply perish — hence Variable for personal conservation.