Theory 6: When Light Arrives It Dispels Darkness, But Darkness Can Never Dispel Light
From a physics perspective, it holds true: light is an actively radiating form of energy, while darkness is simply its absence and has no independent nature of its own. The moment light shines, darkness naturally recedes; darkness has no active power to resist or oppose light.
Philosophically, in Suhrawardi's Illuminationist philosophy (hikmat al-ishraq), light is treated as a positive reality while darkness is treated as a privation, an absence of being. This mirrors the concept of existence and non-existence in Islamic philosophy: existence (light) can remove non-existence (darkness), but non-existence can never negate existence.
Scientifically, darkness has no capacity to absorb or neutralize light. Light can penetrate any dark space and illuminate it; even the faintest source of light can break absolute darkness.
A related property of light is that it casts shadows. A shadow is the direct result of light striking an opaque object, and this phenomenon demonstrates the essentially linear, straight-line nature of light's travel: light cannot pass through opaque bodies, so a shadow forms behind them. The intensity and sharpness of a shadow depend on the strength of the light source and the object's distance from the surface it falls on.
This property has practical significance too: it helps people judge the depth and distance of objects, perceive their three-dimensional shape, and even measure time, as with a sundial. Historically, the study of shadows contributed to major discoveries in astronomy, including the study of solar and lunar eclipses.
Taken together, light and darkness never truly merge to create something new; existence and non-existence remain fundamentally asymmetric, with light always capable of dispelling darkness but never the reverse; and the shadow, as a natural consequence of light meeting an opaque body, remains one of light's most familiar and well-studied properties.
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