Shahla Bakhtiyari; Hedyeh Taghavi
Volume 5, Issue 9 , November 2014, , Pages 1-20
Abstract
Abstract The word science has gone through semantic change in different historical periods and in relation to the cultural and social circumstances of the time and thus has been used in various senses. A semantic study of word in the pre- and post-Islamic eras will reveal that the word has been used ...
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Abstract The word science has gone through semantic change in different historical periods and in relation to the cultural and social circumstances of the time and thus has been used in various senses. A semantic study of word in the pre- and post-Islamic eras will reveal that the word has been used in different and even opposite senses. This means that, in the Age of Ignorance (pre-Islamic era), under the time’s prevalent intellectual and cultural way of thinking, the word science was perceived differently than the age of Islam. Due to its historical importance and background, Mo‘allaqāt al-Sab‘a is a useful text for carrying out a semantic study of the word science in the Age of Ignorance. The Qur’an verses, as an important source from which Islamic principles and thoughts have emerged, can be useful for studying semantic change of the word in the pre-Islamic era. This study uses two aspects of semantic relationship, synonymy and antonymy, to do a semantic study of the word science in the Age of Ignorance and the Islamic era. In the antonymy method, the meaning of science has been determined through words which are used in the context as antonyms of science, and in the synonymy method, words which have been used as an alternative to science have been considered to specify the meaning of the word. In the Age of Ignorance, senses of the word science are basically related to the domains of personal experiences and one’s level of understanding the world around him, but in the sense of the word has gained some cognitive aspects in the Qur’an verses.
