Atomic Structures In The Quran - Part 1

An atomic concept is the simplest unit of meaning which a given word has. By "simple," we don't mean a lack of complexity or ease of comprehension, but simple in a technical sense. Let's take an example from geometry where you're told (and I'll intentionally make it hard to infer):

Consider a certain figure described as follows:

• A simple (non-self-intersecting) closed planar figure with exactly three vertices

• The interior angles sum to exactly 180°

• It is the polygon with the smallest possible number of sides in Euclidean space—you can't construct a polygon with fewer than three straight segments

• It is the only polygon that is inherently rigid: fixing the side lengths fixes the shape completely (no "floppy" joints without changing side lengths)

• Exactly one circle passes through all vertices of the figure (circumcircle)

• Every vertex connects to exactly two other vertices by straight line segments

Your immediate impression would be: this is a triangle. You may have inferred this from a simple, reducible fact—that this figure, as described, possesses the minimal polygonal form possible in Euclidean space. From numerous descriptive examples, you have "deduced" a fact simple enough to include all of them. You have performed a reduction of a collection of statements to the simplest possible explanation that satisfies all conditions.

Obvious, But not that 'Obvious'.

💭 Formal Logic: If you were to express this in formal terms, your mind processed it as: x has the property M Where M(y) ↔ (y is a simple closed polygon ∧ y has fewer vertices than any other simple closed polygon in Euclidean space)

The intuition of "minimal polygonality" is what all the facts ultimately subordinate to. Being so simple in the geometrical sense, it is subject to the widest scope of derivable facts, yet the core remains simple. This is a key feature of atomic concepts: they are often subtle and difficult to reach. So much has to be "scraped off the surface" before that core can be obtained. But when we do obtain this core, we realize that it suddenly constitutes everything—we can find it in everything, it's implied by everything, and from it everything can be constructed by adding complexity. This is hyperbolic, but it paints the picture clearly.

📖 Phenomenology Note: In Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, this process is called "eidetic reduction." When you perform eidetic reduction on "triangle," you don't concern yourself with this or that drawn triangle, but with the essence of "triangle-ness"—a three-sided polygon with certain necessary relations.

You're seeing through the penumbra of facts to the "underlying" invariant component. You know that facts change—a triangle varies in type, in the circumstances of its use, the conditions of its construction, its import—but something remains. This is the atomic concept. It's what we unconsciously aim at when attempting to understand anything.

Crucial distinction: You shouldn't understand the atomic concept as vaguely as an "essence" or a "core," but rather, technically, as a function. The atomic concept, though subtle, is never "hidden"—that's just our impression of it as something that appears behind the more immediate array of observable facts. In reality, it's the most blatant, at least when understood.

Atomic Concepts as Function Words

Atomic concepts are not content words—they are function words. This distinction is crucial. The triangle can only be thought in its simplicity if it can be constructed; the function here is the assembly of attributes in expressing an aspect of triangularity (hence our notion of "concept of measure").

How is "triangularity" a function word? Beyond the content we automatically associate with it, it's an artifact by which certain characteristics of specifically technical interest are "instantiated." Think of it exactly as the geometer and mathematician does, not in the philosopher's sense as we are usually prone to do. This is what we accomplished with our formal description of the triangle.

Content Words vs. Function Words

Content words (lexical words):

• Carry the main meaning of a sentence

• Typically include: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs

  
  

Function words (structure words/grammatical words):

• Serve a grammatical or structural purpose, not lexical meaning

• Typically include: articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, determiners

  
  

Function words are "operational" and technical in their use. We learn to use function words, while we "learn" the meaning of content words—or more accurately, we're told their meanings.

💡 Language Insight: Fluency or eloquence in language is less the effect of "content words" than the free and dexterous handling of function words. They encode the "geometry" of meaning—they're the "meaning-making" aspect of "meaning."

In keeping with our introductory definition of the atomic concept, syllables, phonemes, and morphemes that make up content words are themselves function words—coefficients that are otherwise absorbed in the content word. This simplicity is eventually substituted for more intuitive usage; the function becomes only an expedient by which the intuitive "content word" is generated.

But in applied sciences, the direction is reversed. Evidence for this is found in scientific nomenclature: chemists and biologists, in naming phenomena, borrow and string together syllables and phonemes from Latin. The alphabet itself is a standard model of function words, operating with the same mechanism as variables in mathematical physics.

The Dialectic of Meaning-Making

This requires that we focus on the relation between lexical (content word) meaning and function-word meaning—or as we call it, "meaning-making." Among the function words are articles and prepositions. As we saw in the previous video, the definite article in a particular language is its principle of concept formation. In the Quran, this is treated at the same level of cognizance as a scientific linguist confronts the function word.

There's a dialectic between content and function words: although distinct, they complement and qualify one another. A function word becomes "contentful" when its "functionality" is distinguished. By the same token, a content word has "content" only because its function is given—this is what decides when and where to use the word and when not to use it.

What clearly determines meaning is "manner of use," which is simply function—the logical signature of the definite article. This can be said about anything that has what we vaguely call "meaning"—the safest linguistic generalization.

Key realization: If we approach "meanings" as an analysis of different "functions," then the requisite for distinguishing functions becomes strictly empirical. To be acquainted with the "manner of use" requires that we study various cases of use, to view conditions of use.

🔍 Method Note: Even if we're naively sure about the meaning of a word, functional analysis will reveal important nuances and subtleties which the usual automatic content-use of this term veils from us.

We begin to use content words as function words, and this line of reasoning inevitably leads to poetry. Conversely, when function words are used as content words, it leads to "metaphysics" and "physics."

Etymology Example: Consider the word "energy"—a composite of the syllables "in"/"within" (function words, specifically prepositions) and "ergon" (a content word denoting "work").

Section 2: Function Words as Syllables

Consider the function of words like: in, or, if, from, without, within, inside, into, around, among, at. Notice how visual and tactile they are. When we take them in their simplicity as "deictic terms" and reflect upon the syllables of which they are composed, we realize that there isn't a word in the general corpus of commonly used words that doesn't contain one of them or isn't modified by one of them.

Case study: The "oun" syllable

The word "ground" contains the mediating "oun" syllable which we find in the preposition "about" or "around." The same goes for "sound" or "found." Given enough cases, we come to see the syllable "oun" as a standalone functional device:

announce, bound, council, country, doubt, ounce

Very prevalent, isn't it? So prevalent that you might think it's a word all to itself—but it is merely, and is merely treated as, a functor.

In our analytic method, it should be treated as a word all to itself—an atomic word. The modification it offers and the rules by which it operates are gleaned from the diversity of application. Observe all the words in which it occurs, and eventually, you will begin to register a certain sense.

🎵 Phenomenological Description: It may be a pitch, a sensibility, an image, or a movement of sorts—too vague and elusive to be captured as a content word, but also too important and articulate to be dismissed as its opposite. It strikes a midpoint, where its utility is realized in the connective and emotive "rendering" it serves.

This syllable conveys a kind of "magnitude," but in the immediate sense—a depth factor that is latent in some object. The volume of some object precedes our conception of this object, such that in my conception of "ground" or "ounce," I'm immediately "bound" by whatever "depth" it already holds within itself. It's a sense of being engulfed, enveloped, surrounded...

Reapplication of Sense-Impressions

When you've successfully isolated this sense-impression from various cases of use, you can reapply it to find how this sense-impression qualifies those same words according to their respective domains:

• For "sound": It gives us that distinctly acoustic depth, that inward or interior pervasion of tone—what Oswald Spengler so aptly called a "tone-world"

• For "ground": The depth factor affects our spatial sense, dimensionality perhaps

• For "round": A more radical expression of that intuition of space, capturing not so much a specific, finished geometrical object, but its animation—a "round-about" motion, a "surrounding"

  
  

  📚 References:

  - Oswald Spengler's concept of "tone-world" appears in The Decline of the West (1918-1922), where he discusses how different cultures experience and organize acoustic space differently.

  - Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (1913), where he develops the concept of eidetic reduction as a method for grasping essential structures of consciousness and meaning.