“The Analytic Theory of Knowledge and the Law of Transformation” is published

5/1/2022 13:02

The notes of Kazem Musavi Bojnourd during his imprisonment before the Islamic revolution is released

The Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia (Centre for Iranian and Islamic Studies) published the book “The Analytic Theory of Knowledge and the Law of Transformation (Notes from 1975-1977, Evin Prison)" by Kazem Musavi Bojnurdi, with a foreword by Gholamreza A’vani. When Kazem Musavi Bojnurdi was sentenced to death in early March 1966 for armed struggle, he never imagined that he would establish the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia in March eighteen years later.

He, who had founded the Islamic Nations Party, was trapped in the mountains of Darabad, but the turn of events led him to establish the research institute in the same area.

During the fourteen years he spent in prison, he not only developed the idea of encyclopaedia, but also political and philosophical theories, and authored the book “The Analytic Theory of Knowledge and the Law of Transformation”. It was the result of his reflections on the concept of “knowledge” in eleven principles as follows:

Freedom as the gem of knowledge

Conflict as the cause of knowledge

The world is a reality separate from the mind

Origin of knowledge (material world)

Subject of knowledge (material and immaterial)

The reality of the world is recognizable

Knowledge is relative

The goal of knowledge (action guide)

Knowledge mechanism

Criterion of knowledge (action + pure wisdom process)

Stages of knowledge (sensory, theoretical, pure wisdom, mystical)

In the introduction, the author mentions: “Before the Islamic revolution, although we started armed struggle to overthrow the Shah’s regime and establish the Islamic Republic within the framework of the Islamic Nations, in the prison I came to the conclusion that armed struggle is not the right way, and firstly the public wisdom should be raised. For this reason, the idea of creating an Islamic encyclopaedia came to my mind in the prison, and later, on the eve of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, during Bakhtiar’s presidency, I was released from prison. After the Islamic Revolution, I was active in politics for a few years, but I put it aside and in 1983 and established the Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia.

... Before being released, I spent sixteen months in Evin, where there were several prisons. The late Abolghasem Sarhadizadeh, the mystic and great revolutionary, and I were imprisoned with members of the Tudeh Party of Iran, the Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas, and People’s Mujahedin of Iran, which was an exceptional opportunity to create this book in my private corner; especially since the members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran had boycotted me and the late Sarhadizadeh. This essay, written in small handwriting in those years, is now published in print. I hope that the ideas I have put forward in those circumstances about the theory of knowledge, determination and free will, and the law of transformation may be helpful and criticized by thinkers. This book, based on a specific view of that restless world, in which the concepts of motion and conflict and the general relation between all phenomena prevail, leads us to scientific thought and method. In this way, I may have put forward a minor step.

The text’s edition has been done with the utmost accuracy so that there is no change in its original form. All the opinions expressed in it were written in the secluded corner of Evin prison, which, of course, regardless of its scientific importance, is evocative to me and reveals my intellectual atmosphere of that period. However, today I believe in a competitive economy.

I always saw in my mind a hectic world that is legitimate. I considered it a divine rule and attempted to view it in my analysis. Today I think the same.

You can read Dr. Gholamreza A’vani’s foreword to this book here.

“The Analytic Theory of Knowledge and the Law of Transformation” is published in 141 pages and 500 copies.

To purchase the book please call 00982122297677 or order online at: store.cgie.org.ir.