What is meant
What is meant is that history does not proceed according to a path that can be preset or copied literally, because human conditions do not recur in the same form Human awareness and freedom make the exact repetition of the same causes impossible
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Movement of the argument: denies the possibility of programming history or copying it literally.
- Central terms: history, programming, awareness, freedom.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
This atom affirms that history does not repeat in the same form because human conditions change, and thus it makes strict prediction limited and gives freedom a decisive role in historical formation.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Qur’anic Stories, vol. 2
- History, Development, and Sunan
- history
- freedom
- The Qur’anic stories reveal the historical Sunan and the human role in them
Basis
- Supporting text: «History is not understood as a path that can be preprogrammed or reproduced literally; because the exact repetition of the same causes is impossible as human awareness and freedom change».
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: The Qur’anic Stories, vol. 2.
- Location: in the final section of the book, in the discussion of the repetition of causes and history.
- Type of basis: close witness.
- Marker for verification: resistant to prior programming
- Reading note: the text explicitly states the impossibility of the exact repetition of causes and that history is resistant to prior programming, which matches the atom.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a literal quotation unless the witness is quoted verbatim.
Function in the book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Related to
Editorial note
The atom is methodological because it discusses the susceptibility of history to rigid modeling.