Measurement and the Regulation of Social History

Formulation of the Claim

Qiyās is presented as a tool for regulating social history within a rational horizon that conceives social time as homogeneous.

Explanation

The text links rational principles to this conception of time, then shows that qiyās is used to coordinate the movement of history within this horizon. In the same passage, it moves on to criticize the conversion of qiyās into a means of controlling history through revelation.

Its Place in the Book’s Argument

This idea belongs to the trajectory that connects historical rationalization with the limits of its use in understanding history and religion, where qiyās becomes part of an attempt to organize social history, not merely a separate inferential tool detached from its context.

What the Atom Does Not Say

It does not deny that qiyās may have a broader cognitive role, nor does it say that the text reduces it to a single function. It also does not separate its use in regulating history from the critique directed at employing it to dominate history.

Brief Evidence

[3] E. Benveniste: “Catégories de pensée et catégorie de langue” in Problèmes de linguistique générale. Gallimard, t, I, P. 63-74 Second: the rational principles embodied in identity, non-contradiction, and qiyās consolidate the concept of homogeneous social time, since argumentative practice by means of qiyās becomes possible, indeed necessary. In this way, Muslim jurists imposed this argumentation as a methodology for controlling history through revelation, but how illusory and harmful this methodology is, and, above all, how opposed it is to that invigorating innovation of God’s word that moves history with all its vitality. Thus we end up with that highly significant contradiction embodied in the writings of one of the most respected thinkers in Isl

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