Formulation of the Claim
The Qur’an presents the cosmos as a sacred and semiotic spacetime.
Explanation
Arkoun holds that the cosmos in the Qur’an is not presented as a neutral material domain, but as a space that directs the gaze toward reflection. In this conception, place and time acquire religious value because they bear signs and meaning within Qur’anic discourse.
This means that the Qur’anic world is not understood merely as a juxtaposition of things, but as a signifying system that links beings to a transcendent referent. Thus “spacetime” here is not a physical description, but a formulation for understanding the cosmos within the horizon of sacredness and signification.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s effort to read the Qur’an in a way that reveals its symbolic structure and its modes of representing the world. It is connected to other atoms that highlight the presence of the sign, reflection, and the sacred in the construction of Qur’anic discourse, making the cosmos part of a broader argument about how religious meaning is formed in the text.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be burdened with a technical philosophical meaning of the concept of spacetime, nor turned into a natural description of the cosmos outside the horizon of Qur’anic reading. Nor should it be reduced to a report on the elements of nature, since it concerns how the cosmos is represented within the text.
Brief Evidence
By reason here we mean the theoretical crystallization of bodies of knowledge that are continually exposed to critique and renewal. It means the systematic search for the following: establishing a correspondence between the descriptive study of phenomena and a deep explanatory analysis of them. As a result, there is no place here for a hypostatized, particular reason, outside the coordinates of time and place and the Mashriq
Nearby Links
- Readings in the Qur’an
- Arkoun
- the Qur’an