Qur'an and Science

A Hermeneutical Approach

Bibliographic Data

ID22318543
AuthorsMassimo Campanini (corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume7
Issue1
Pages48-63
Publication date2005-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Qur'anic Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-3591 • E-ISSN: 1755-1730
PublisherEdinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3366/jqs.2005.7.1.48
OpenAlexW1984293668
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited3

My aim in the present article is to evaluate the meaning of the Qur’anic text as a linguistic system with its own objectivity by reference to an interpreter who – as Gadamer said – looks at the text with ‘positive prejudices’. The issue in question is how the passages of the Holy Text regarding natural sciences or the cosmological order of the universe can be read from a hermeneutical viewpoint, in a philosophical rather than a historical, grammatical or stylistic sense; the debated problems of literary and artistic character, and the relationship between Qur’an and science per se, are not involved here. This article takes the stance that hermeneutics as a philosophical science, and not simply as a system through which meaning is extracted from a text, is destined to become a pivotal science in Islamic, and particularly Qur’anic, studies. After all, Islam is a culture grounded on a book, the Qur’an, and the Qur’an calls out for textual exegesis. By hermeneutics I mean here neither the classical textual exegesis of tafsir, nor the spiritual esoteric exegesis of ta√wil as defined by Shifii authors or by Henry Corbin (1903–78); I mean, rather, philosophic hermeneutics in the sense of Hans Gadamer (1900–2002) or Paul Ricoeur (b. 1913)

Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Sociology · Education and Islamic Studies · Families in Therapy and Culture · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy

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