Intended Meaning
In Muhammad Shahrur’s view, the heart is not the cardiac muscle, but the brain or cerebrum, because it is the locus of rational thought and understanding. What is meant by the heart here is the center of comprehension and perception, not the bodily center for pumping blood.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: interpretive
- Direction of the argument: it interprets the heart as the center of understanding and perception rather than its direct bodily meaning.
- Key terms: heart, rational thought, understanding, brain.
- Degree of centrality: subsidiary.
It presents an important semantic shift in the interpretation of the term, linking the linguistic meaning to the human cognitive position within the framework of contemporary reading.
Reading Aids
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Book and the Qur’an
- the contemporary reading method
- understanding
- Human knowledge is relative and progresses from sense perception to mathematics
Grounding
- Supporting text: “The heart: he interprets it as the cerebrum/brain, not the cardiac muscle, as the center of rational thought and understanding.”
Grounding Location in the Book
- Book: The Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: in the middle section of the book, within the explanation of the meaning of the chest and the heart.
- Type of grounding: proximate evidence.
- Mark that helps verification: the front of the head, that is, the brain
- Reading note: this passage is suitable as support because the evidence explains the chest as the front of the head, that is, the brain, and states explicitly that human decisions are made in the brain, which is close to 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 wording above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted verbatim.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it establishes a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in constructing the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
It should be noted that this interpretation departs from the common understanding and rests on redefining the term.