Intended Meaning
The heart is the immediate perception that arises from hearing and sight; it is the first stage in the formation of knowledge and is not meant as a separate organ, but as an epistemic stage that precedes reason and abstraction
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of claim: definitional
- Argument movement: it makes the heart an initial perceptual stage before reason.
- Central terms: heart, sensory perception, hearing, sight.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
It determines the heart’s place in the ladder of knowledge as direct perception that precedes abstraction, and this helps in understanding the author’s construction of knowledge from sensation to meaning.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Book and the Qur’an
- The contemporary reading methodology
- Human knowledge is relative and progresses from sensation to mathematics
Basis
- Supporting text: “The heart: the direct perception produced by hearing and sight, and it is an initial stage of thought, not a separate organ.”
Basis Location in the Book
- Book: The Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: in the early sections of the book
- Type of basis: close textual witness.
- Marker that helps verification: through the senses of hearing and sight
- Reading note: the location links initial perception to the senses of hearing and sight, and this supports the atom that speaks of the heart as an initial sensory perception.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it establishes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
The atom prepares for reading the development of knowledge, not for explaining the organ.