This entry examines the Qur'anic statement that all things were created in pairs, in 36:36, 51:49 and 20:53, and in particular the clause "and from that which they do not know." The question is how far that open-ended phrase can reasonably be read against discoveries made long after the seventh century.
The source text
سُبْحَـٰنَ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلْأَزْوَٰجَ كُلَّهَا مِمَّا تُنۢبِتُ ٱلْأَرْضُ وَمِنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ وَمِمَّا لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
“Exalted is He who created all pairs - from what the earth grows and from themselves and from that which they do not know.”
Qur'an 36:36 · Saheeh International
وَمِن كُلِّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقْنَا زَوْجَيْنِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ
“And of all things We created two mates [i.e., counterparts]; perhaps you will remember.”
Qur'an 51:49 · Saheeh International
ٱلَّذِى جَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلْأَرْضَ مَهْدًا وَسَلَكَ لَكُمْ فِيهَا سُبُلًا وَأَنزَلَ مِنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءً فَأَخْرَجْنَا بِهِۦٓ أَزْوَٰجًا مِّن نَّبَاتٍ شَتَّىٰ
“[It is He] who has made for you the earth as a bed [spread out] and inserted therein for you roadways and sent down from the sky rain and produced thereby categories [azwaj, pairs] of various plants.”
Qur'an 20:53 · Saheeh International
What was understood in the seventh century
That humans and many animals come in male and female pairs was obvious to any seventh-century observer, and the pairing of complementary forms in fruit and other produce was equally familiar. Plant sexuality in the strict sense, however, was not established: plants were not generally understood to reproduce through distinct male and female elements, and the pairing of matter at any deeper physical level lay entirely outside the available knowledge.
The verses go beyond the visible categories. Surah Ya-Sin 36:36 speaks of pairs "from what the earth grows and from themselves and from that which they do not know," explicitly extending pairing past the kinds the audience could already recognise. Surah adh-Dhariyat 51:49 states that "of all things We created two mates," a general claim, while 20:53 describes rain producing azwaj, pairs or categories, of various plants. The clause "that which they do not know" is the open door on which the sign-reading turns.
The modern correspondence
The sexual reproduction of plants, through stamens and pistils, was only systematised in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably by Camerarius in 1694 and later by Linnaeus. This established that many plants once regarded as sexless in fact reproduce through paired male and female elements, an example of a pairing the original audience did not know.
Modern physics later described matter and antimatter and paired subatomic properties, with the electron's antiparticle, the positron, proposed by Dirac in 1928 and detected in 1932. Some commentators read "that which they do not know" as gesturing toward pairings of both kinds, botanical and physical, that were unavailable to seventh-century knowledge. In 20:53 the word azwaj is often rendered "categories" or "kinds" as well as "pairs," and it is the pairing sense on which this reading depends.
Considerations and counterpoints
Critics argue that zawjayn can simply mean kinds, opposites, or male and female in the ordinary sense, and that fruit and many plants visibly come in complementary forms, so no hidden botany is required to make sense of the verses. The plant-pair reading is reasonably well supported by the later history of botany, but extending the phrase to antimatter or paired subatomic properties is interpretation-dependent and, they say, could be applied to almost any pairing that science happens to discover. The open-ended clause is genuinely striking, and it is a real strength of the passage that it points beyond the audience's knowledge; but that same breadth makes the more ambitious physical readings look post-hoc rather than predictive. A phrase that reserves a category of unknown pairs will always fit whatever new pair is later described, and defenders and critics differ mainly on whether that flexibility counts as foresight or as a template into which any discovery can be fitted after the fact.
Credibility rating: Tier 2 · Interpretive — The plant-pair reading is well supported and the 'what you do not know' clause is a genuine open-ended statement, but extending it to antimatter or subatomic pairs is interpretation-dependent and could be applied to almost anything.