Atmosphere

In the matter of the formation of the universe, the holy Qur’an mentions various phenomena, each playing a special role in the evolution of the universe. In this article, we describe two celestial phenomena that have been discussed in verses (Q.21:30) and 41:11, and we assess the possibility of matching these two verses with new scientific findings. Our approach in this study is that we first examine the plausible meanings of the verses through lexical, morphological, syntactic and interpretive analysis. Then we propose possible scientific phenomena compatible with achieved meanings of the verse and evaluate their conformity. Results of this study show that the reference of the Qur’an to the two phenomena, i.e., “coalescence and separation of the skies and the earth,” and “the formation of the sky from smoke,” can be compatible with the scientific phenomena of the Big Bang, the formation of the solar system and the formation of the earth and its atmosphere. 

The theoretical vagueness of a concept such as genius loci (spirit of the place) makes often feel unsatisfied. To avoid the widespread more rhetorical trend to attributing a spirit to every place - a trend already discernible in the progressive secularisation from the Greek world (an uncanny daimon) to the Roman world (a familiar genius) – and/or to explaining it as the outcome of creative human planning (especially architectural-urban), my paper states that a place has its specific genius only if it radiates a specific and particularly intense-authoritative atmosphere. That is, when the place is pervaded by a quasi-objective feeling that affects the perceiver and finds in their felt (or lived) body its precise sounding board. Just as there are different types of atmospheres (prototypic, derivative, spurious) and atmospheric encounters, there are therefore different types of genius loci, also depending on one's conception of space, here always understood as lived space, i.e. qualitative-anisotropic, and not in a physical-geometric (isotropic) sense. Contrary to the today’s prevailing projectivist-constructionist explanation (culturalist as well as neuroscientific) and the tendency to explain every affective quality inherent in the external world as a subjective projection, i.e. according to an hydraulic model following the Platonic “invention” of the soul, a “pathic aesthetics” based on a neo-phenomenological approach means with genius loci, in the authentic and original sense of the term, a lifewordly qualitative-emotional experience: in brief a spatialised atmospheric feeling that can sometimes be protected, maybe also improved but never arbitrarily created.