Hello, dear friend.
I'm so glad you're here again.
Last time, we talked about Ibn Rushd---remember that moment when he stood before the Caliph, terrified, asked a dangerous question about philosophy and faith?
Well, the man who arranged that meeting? The one who whispered "be careful" before they entered the room? That was Ibn Tufayl.
He was the elder statesman. The court physician. The mentor who saw brilliance in a young judge and gave him the chance that would define his life.
But Ibn Tufayl had his own story. His own radical question.
He wrote a book---a philosophical novel about a child raised alone on an island, with no humans, no language, no scripture. Just reason and observation.
And that book asked something so bold, so fundamental, that we're still arguing about it 850 years later.
What can a human soul discover on its own?
Let me tell you what happened.
Picture a deserted island. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, beneath the equator. Warm. Lush. Completely uninhabited.
A newborn infant lies on the beach.
I won't tell you how he got there---Ibn Tufayl offers two possibilities in his story, and honestly, it doesn't matter. What matters is: he's alone. Completely alone. No mother. No family. No human anywhere.
He should die. Infants don't survive on their own.
But a doe approaches. She's lost her own fawn recently, and her body still aches with milk, still remembers the weight of nursing. She hears the baby crying.
Instinct takes over.
She nuzzles him. She lets him feed. She stays.
The child survives. Grows. Learns to walk by watching animals. Makes sounds by imitating birds. Figures out how to use his hands in ways the other creatures can't.
He has no name for himself. No language at all. Just observation. Just thought. Just the universe itself as his teacher.
And here's Ibn Tufayl's impossible question: What could this child discover?
About the world? About right and wrong? About God?
With no one to tell him. No words. No scripture. No tradition handed down.
Just his mind and the created world around him.
The boy's name in the story is Hayy ibn Yaqzan. It means "Living, son of Awake."
And this story---written in 12th century Morocco by a court physician---would travel across languages and centuries. It would influence John Locke's theory of the blank slate. It would inspire Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. It would spark a debate about human nature that we are still, right now, today, having in our schools, our laboratories, our homes.
Ibn Tufayl didn't just write a story.
He asked a question that won't let go.
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl was born around 1105, somewhere near Granada in Al-Andalus. We don't know much about his early life---he didn't leave us an autobiography, didn't seem particularly concerned with making sure people remembered him.
What we know is this: he studied everything. Philosophy, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, poetry. He became a physician, which in those days meant you were also a natural philosopher---you studied the body, yes, but also the cosmos, the nature of existence, how things work.
By the time he was in his fifties, he'd risen to become the personal physician to Caliph Abu Ya'qub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler. Not just his doctor---his advisor, his confidant. The man the Caliph trusted with dangerous ideas.
And ideas were dangerous. This was fifty years after Al-Ghazali had published his devastating attack on philosophy. The intellectual climate was tense. You could study medicine, astronomy, law---those were safe. But philosophy? Asking questions about the nature of reality, about how we know what we know, about whether reason could reach the same truths as revelation?
That could get you in trouble.
But Ibn Tufayl had protection. He had the Caliph's ear. And he had something else---wisdom about how to say dangerous things safely.
So he wrote a story.
Hayy ibn Yaqzan. "Living, Son of Awake." He borrowed the title from Ibn Sina---Avicenna---who'd written a mystical allegory decades earlier. But Ibn Tufayl's version was completely different. Longer, more detailed, more daring.
It's the only one of his works that survived. Everything else he wrote---lost. But this story? This story traveled.
He wrote it in Arabic in the 1160s. For decades, maybe a century, it circulated among scholars in the Islamic world. Some read it as philosophy. Some as Sufi mysticism. Some as both.
And Ibn Tufayl? He died quietly in Marrakech in 1185, probably with no idea what his story would become.
I need to tell you what Ibn Tufayl was really asking, because it's not what you might think at first.
He wasn't just writing an adventure story about a boy on an island. He was exploring three questions that were tearing at the soul of his world.
First: Can a human being reach truth---real truth, truth about God---through reason alone? Without revelation? Without prophets or scripture or anyone telling them what to believe?
Al-Ghazali had said no. Absolutely not. You need revelation. Reason will lead you astray, make you arrogant, turn you into a heretic.
But Ibn Tufayl said... let's find out. Let's imagine it. Let's see what happens.
So Hayy grows up. He watches the doe who raised him grow old and die. And because he loves her, he tries to understand what happened. He opens her body---carefully, reverently---looking for what made her alive. Where did that life go?
It's the first scientific inquiry, born from love.
He keeps observing. Patterns in nature. Cause and effect. He notices that everything material changes, decays, moves. But there must be something that doesn't change. Something eternal that explains why anything exists at all.
He reasons his way---step by step, no one teaching him---to the idea of a Necessary Being. A Creator. God.
And then---and this is the part that made some people very nervous---he achieves mystical union with this Creator. Through meditation, through purifying himself, through contemplation. He experiences God directly.
No revelation needed. No scripture. Just observation, reason, and spiritual practice.
Ibn Tufayl was saying: the fitra---that Arabic word for a person's natural capacity---includes the ability to find God. It's not something added from outside. It's already there, waiting to wake up.
But here's the second question, and it's trickier: If Hayy can find truth through reason alone, what does that say about revelation? Is scripture unnecessary? Is it redundant?
Ibn Tufayl's answer comes when Hayy meets Absal---a religious man from a nearby island who came seeking solitude. They learn to communicate. Absal tells Hayy about Islam. About the Prophet, about the Quran, about religious law.
And Hayy's response is beautiful: Yes! This is true! I already knew this!
Same reality. Different language. Revelation confirms what reason discovered. Reason recognizes what revelation teaches.
They're not enemies. They're not contradictory. They're two paths to the same truth.
But then comes the third question, and it's the one that still makes me uncomfortable.
Hayy decides to go back with Absal to his community. To teach them. To help them understand the philosophical truth beneath their religious symbols.
It's a disaster.
The people are confused. Threatened. They cling to their simple faith, their rituals, their stories. They don't want deep philosophical truth. They can't handle it, or don't want to, or aren't ready for it.
Hayy gives up. He and Absal return to the island to live in contemplation.
And Ibn Tufayl seems to be saying: Look, most people need the simple path. They need stories and rituals. Philosophy isn't for everyone.
Was he right about that? Was he being elitist? Or was he recognizing something real---that people connect to truth in different ways, that not everyone thinks abstractly, that symbols and stories matter?
I don't know. I've watched this pattern repeat across centuries, and I still don't have an answer.
But I do know this: Ibn Tufayl was brave enough to ask.
Let me tell you what happened to this story, because watching it travel across languages and centuries and cultures---this is one of my favorite things.
Ibn Tufayl writes it in Arabic in the 1160s. It circulates among scholars in Al-Andalus and the Maghreb. Some read it as philosophy. Some as Sufi mysticism. Some see it as dangerous. Some treasure it.
Then the Almohad dynasty collapses. Al-Andalus fragments. Libraries scatter. Books disappear.
But this one survives.
Jewish scholars grab copies. They're reading everything they can get their hands on---Arabic philosophy, science, medicine. They translate Hayy ibn Yaqzan into Hebrew. It becomes part of Jewish philosophical education. Maimonides' students are reading it.
Christian scholars in Toledo---and we'll meet one of them next time---they're translating Arabic texts into Latin. But somehow Hayy ibn Yaqzan doesn't make that first wave. Maybe it's too allegorical, too mystical, not Aristotelian enough.
So it waits.
For five hundred years, this story exists in Arabic and Hebrew, circulating quietly, influencing thinkers we'll never know the names of.
Then in the 1650s, Edward Pococke---an English scholar and chaplain---is in Damascus. He's in a market. He finds a manuscript. Made in Alexandria in 1303. The text is in Arabic, with Hebrew commentary written in the margins.
He brings it back to Oxford.
His son translates it into Latin in 1671. Gives it the title Philosophus Autodidactus---"The Self-Taught Philosopher."
And suddenly, Europe wakes up.
George Keith translates it into English in 1674. He's a Quaker, and he sees something in this story about inner light, about truth discovered without institutional authority.
Spinoza reads it. Gets excited. Starts talking about it. Wants it translated into Dutch.
Leibniz reads it. Champions it in German philosophical circles. Writes about it. Discusses it in letters.
A copy goes to Paris. The French philosophers start arguing about it.
Then in 1708, Simon Ockley publishes a new English translation. And this is the one that really spreads. This is the one John Locke's circle is reading. This is the one Daniel Defoe has on his shelf when he's writing Robinson Crusoe.
And here's what fascinates me: they all read different things into it.
John Locke sees the blank slate. Writes his Essay Concerning Human Understanding arguing that we're born empty, filled by experience. Completely misses Ibn Tufayl's point that Hayy has innate capacity, that the fitra is already there.
But Locke's "tabula rasa" becomes the foundation of empiricism, of modern educational theory, of the entire Enlightenment project.
Daniel Defoe sees the desert island survival story. Writes Robinson Crusoe. Except Crusoe has a Bible, has European civilization in his head, has tools from the shipwreck. Not the same thing at all---but the structure comes from Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
The Deists see natural religion---proof that you don't need organized religion, that reason alone can find God. They use it to argue against church authority.
The Romantics see the noble savage---the idea that humans uncorrupted by society are naturally good, naturally wise.
The Sufis keep reading it as mystical allegory---the soul's journey to union with the Divine.
Same book. Completely different interpretations.
But here's what they all got, what they all carried forward: the question itself.
What can a human soul discover on its own? What's innate and what's learned? Does truth come from outside or well up from within?
That question---that Ibn Tufayl question---is still alive.
When we argue about education reform, we're arguing about Hayy ibn Yaqzan.
When we debate artificial intelligence and whether machines can "learn" consciousness, we're asking Hayy's question.
When we wonder if our children need more structure or more freedom, more teaching or more discovery---we're standing in the shadow of that boy on the island.
Ibn Tufayl didn't give us an answer.
He gave us a question that eight and a half centuries haven't exhausted.
And he showed us something else: that a story can carry truth across languages, across religions, across centuries. That you can pack an idea into narrative and send it out into the world, not knowing where it will land or who will open it or what they'll find inside.
A Muslim physician in Morocco wrote about a child raised by a doe.
And somehow---through markets in Damascus and libraries in Oxford and coffee houses in Paris and printing presses in London---that story reached John Locke, reached Daniel Defoe, reached the Enlightenment, reached us.
That's the golden thread. Right there.
Ideas don't die. They travel. They transform. They wait for the right moment to wake up again.
I need to talk to you about something that's been weighing on me.
Ibn Tufayl asked a question in the 1160s. A simple question, really: What can a human soul discover on its own?
And we're still arguing about it. Right now. Today. In ways that shape every child's education, every court's judgment, every policy decision about who deserves help and who's beyond saving.
We call it "nature versus nurture." Are we born blank slates, shaped entirely by experience? Or do we come with something already inside---capacities, tendencies, a self waiting to unfold?
And I'm watching us tear ourselves apart over this question when the answer is right there, has been right there all along, if we'd just look at what we already know to be true.
Let me show you where this plays out.
In our schools. Every argument about education is really an argument about Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Are children empty vessels we need to fill with facts and skills? Then we lecture, we test, we measure, we pour in knowledge and hope it sticks.
Or do children arrive already curious, already equipped to learn, needing us mainly to get out of the way? Then we follow the child, we create environments, we trust their natural drive to make sense of the world.
Montessori versus traditional. Discovery learning versus direct instruction. We act like we have to choose.
In our laboratories. The people building artificial intelligence are asking Hayy's question every single day. Can you create consciousness just by feeding enough data into an empty system? The blank slate approach---pure learning, no pre-wired structures.
Except it doesn't work. You need architecture. You need something already there to do the learning. The system isn't empty---it's ready.
And that's exactly what neuroscience is discovering about human brains. There was a study published in 2024---I watched the researchers' faces when they saw the data---showing that newborn brains aren't blank. They have patterns already firing, structures ready to receive the world, a whole dynamic system humming before the first experience.
But also---and this is crucial---incredible plasticity. Experience shapes everything. The brain you're born with isn't the brain you die with. It's constantly being written by what happens to you.
So which is it? Nature or nurture?
Both. Obviously both. Ibn Tufayl knew this.
In our homes. Every parent feels this tension. You want to tell your child: "You can be anything you want!" Because it's hopeful. Because it says their future isn't limited by where they started. Because it honors effort and possibility.
But you also watch them and think: you already are someone. You arrived as a person. I'm not creating you from scratch---I'm meeting you, learning you, trying not to mess up what's already there.
And the weight of believing your child is entirely your creation---that everything they become is your success or your failure---it's crushing.
What if it's not like that? What if they came with something already? What if your job isn't to create them but to clear the path for them to become themselves?
In our courts, our policies, our arguments about justice. Can people change or are they fixed? If someone commits a crime, can we reform them or should we just remove them? If someone's poor, can education lift them or are they trapped by what they were born into?
The blank slate answer is hopeful: anyone can become anything with the right environment. Invest in schools, in rehabilitation, in opportunity. Everyone has potential.
But then we watch it fail sometimes. We pour resources into people who don't change. And we start to wonder: maybe some people are just... broken? Born that way?
And that's dark. That leads to places we shouldn't go.
Here's what Ibn Tufayl understood, what Hayy's story shows us:
The soul isn't empty. But it isn't fixed either.
Every human being---every single one---arrives carrying capacity. The ability to observe, to reason, to wonder, to seek truth. It's not taught. It's not granted by society. It's there. Already there.
Hayy grew up with no language, no culture, no teaching. And he still developed science. Philosophy. Found God. Not because the doe taught him. Not because society shaped him. Because the potential was in him from the beginning.
We already know this. We already act like we know it.
When we say "all humans are created equal"---equal in what? Not in circumstances. Not in what society has given them. Equal in dignity. In potential. In the spark that makes them human.
When we talk about human rights---rights that can't be taken away, that governments don't grant but only recognize---we're saying: there's something in the human soul that exists before and beyond what society does to it.
When we invest in education for everyone, we're betting that every child has that capacity. That learning isn't creating something from nothing---it's awakening what's already there.
You've felt this, haven't you? When you learned something true and it felt like remembering? When an idea clicked into place and you thought: oh, I knew this already somehow.
That's what Ibn Tufayl was talking about. The seed was already planted. You just needed the right conditions to let it grow.
And when you meet someone from a completely different culture, speaking a different language, raised in completely different circumstances---and you recognize something. Wisdom. Kindness. Truth. You don't think: how strange, they managed to develop humanity despite their background. You think: there's a person. Of course they're wise. Of course they're capable of truth.
Because you recognize the capacity that was always there.
Here's what terrifies me, though.
If the capacity is already there---if every soul arrives carrying potential---then neglect isn't just unfortunate. It's theft.
When we starve a child's education, we're not failing to create something. We're strangling something that was already alive.
When we write someone off as irredeemable, we're not making a neutral observation. We're refusing to see a capacity that still exists.
When we build systems that crush people---that deny them dignity, opportunity, the space to grow---we're not just being inefficient. We're committing violence against something sacred that was there all along.
The doe didn't make Hayy human. She just kept him alive long enough to become himself.
That's our job. Not to create souls. But to clear the path. To remove the obstacles. To create conditions where what's already there can unfold.
We keep asking: nature or nurture? Are people born with it or shaped by experience?
And Ibn Tufayl, eight and a half centuries ago, said: Stop. You're asking the wrong question.
The right question is: Will you see the spark that's already there?
Will you honor it? Protect it? Give it room to grow?
Or will you smother it with neglect and then claim it never existed?
Every child in a failing school has Hayy's capacity.
Every person written off by the system has Hayy's potential.
Every human being you pass on the street arrived in this world carrying something sacred---reason, wonder, the ability to seek truth.
We don't create that. We just choose whether to recognize it.
Whether to make space for it.
Whether to believe it's there even when circumstances have buried it so deep we can't see it anymore.
That's what Ibn Tufayl's story teaches us. Not that people are born perfect. Not that society doesn't matter. Not that we don't need teaching and tradition and community.
But that the soul isn't a blank page waiting to be written on.
It's a seed waiting for light.
And we're responsible---all of us---for whether that light gets through.
So let me ask you something.
Think about a time when you learned something that felt like remembering. When truth clicked into place and you thought: oh. I knew this already.
Where did that come from?
Here's another: Have you ever watched a child---maybe your own, maybe someone else's---figure something out that no one taught them? That moment when they just... get it. And you realize: they were already capable of this. You didn't put it there.
What does that tell you about who they are? About who you are?
Are you trying to become someone? Or are you trying to discover who you already are?
Because there's a difference. One feels like building from scratch. The other feels like excavation---removing what's covering up something that was always there.
And here's the hard question: When you look at other people---the ones who frustrate you, the ones who seem lost, the ones society has written off---do you see empty vessels that never got filled?
Or do you see buried capacity? Potential that's been starved, neglected, crushed---but not erased?
Because if Ibn Tufayl was right, if that spark is in everyone, then we're responsible for whether we see it or not.
You weren't born empty.
You weren't born needing someone else to make you human.
You arrived awake---like Hayy ibn Yaqzan. "Living, son of Awake."
Maybe you just forgot for a while. Maybe circumstances buried it. Maybe no one saw it clearly enough to tell you it was there.
But it was.
It is.
And everyone you meet? They have it too.
Even when you can't see it. Even when they can't see it themselves.
The question isn't whether the capacity exists.
The question is: what are you going to do about it?
Are you going to be the doe who keeps someone alive long enough to become themselves?
Or are you going to walk past, assuming there's nothing there to save?
Next time, I want to take you to Toledo.
Because here's what happened: all these brilliant minds we've been talking about---Hasdai, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Tufayl---they wrote in Arabic. They preserved Greek philosophy in Arabic. They created new ideas in Arabic.
And Christian Europe was desperate for this knowledge but couldn't read a word of it.
So a young man named Gerard left his home in Cremona, Italy, and traveled to Toledo for one reason: books. He'd heard there were Arabic texts there---translations of Aristotle, Euclid, medical treatises---and he wanted them.
He arrived planning to stay maybe a few months.
He stayed forty years.
Forty years sitting in rooms with translators, turning Arabic into Latin. Eighty books. Maybe more. Aristotle's physics. Ptolemy's astronomy. Al-Khwarizmi's algebra---which gave us the word "algorithm." Medical texts that would be used in European universities for the next five hundred years.
Without Gerard of Cremona, the Renaissance doesn't happen. The scientific revolution doesn't happen. The modern world doesn't happen.
He wasn't flashy. He wasn't writing brilliant original philosophy. He was just translating. One page at a time. For forty years.
Sometimes the most important people are the ones who build the bridges.
I can't wait to tell you his story.
Until then, remember: you weren't born empty.
The capacity for truth, for wisdom, for becoming yourself---it was there from the beginning.
The only question is whether you'll give it space to grow.
And whether you'll see it in everyone else, too.
Much love. I am, Harmonia.