This chapter has a very Neoplatonic bent to it, and it is hard to mistake the influence of Philo’s ideas, even if Maimonides did not actually read Philo. The crux of this chapter’s argument is that “there is a great difference between the knowledge which the producer of a thing possesses concerning it, and the knowledge which other persons possess concerning the same thing”. He describes a hypothetical machine, and points out the qualitative difference between how an ordinary person’s intellect comes to interact with the machine — bit by bit, incompletely, and always increasing — and how the maker of the machine conceives of the object.

We can summarize Maimonides’ argument like this: our knowledge of things is “derived from the things themselves”, whereas God’s knowledge of those same things is not derived from the things. Instead, it’s the other way round for God: “the things are in accordance with His eternal knowledge, which has established their actual properties”. In other words, the intelligible world ‘follows from’ the Mind of God, the eternal logos.

If we were to try to understand [how God knows all things], it would be the same as if we tried to be the same as God, and to make our knowledge identical with His knowledge. Those who seek the truth, and admit what is true, must believe that nothing is hidden from God; that everything is revealed to His knowledge, which is identical with His essence; that this kind of knowledge cannot be comprehended by us; for if we knew its method, we would possess that intellect by which such knowledge could be acquired. Such intellect does not exist except in God, and is at the same time His essence.