Author
Professor-The Islamic College,(affiliated with Middlesex University), UK Adjunct Professor, National Research Institute for Science Policy (Iran)
Abstract
This article aims at introducing the critical rationalist approach to Quranic studies. Following some preliminaries concerning the Quran and Quranic studies in the first section, a summary account of critical rationalism will be presented in the second one. Then, the critical rationalist view of religion will be briefly presented in the third section. In section four, a set of interrelated concepts, namely, ‘algorithmic compressibility’, ‘complex systems’, and ‘logical depth’, will be introduced. Building on the results of the earlier sections, in section five, it will be argued that the Quran is a complex system with a considerable logical depth whose message can be best understood with the help of critical rationalism. Section six contains a short discussion concerning the Quran and semantical and hermeneutical approaches. Section seven is dedicated to a brief critical comparison between Imam Ali’s method of understanding the Quran, known as ‘the method of istintaq (interrogation)’ and the critical rationalist’s approach. Some possible criticisms of critical rationalism are discussed in section eight and section nine recaps and summarizes the discussions in the article.
Keywords
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