Social Sciences Department Baqir al-Olum University
Abstract
As Edmund Husserl’s epistemological method, Wilhelm Dilthey’s Verstehen approach, positivistic approaches to science, Karl Marx’s and GWF Hegel’s dialectics, William James’ pragmatic philosophy, Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Roy Bhaskar’s critical approach each bring their own particular methodology to the realm of social sciences, the philosophical realism of the Islamic world, too, with the authority and credibility it allocates to the three sources, sense, reason, and revelation, will undoubtedly present its own specific methodology to the field of social sciences. This methodology will, in turn, create its own specific knowledge. A brief account of the specifications of this knowledge is that (1) though it accepts the empiricist aspects of social sciences, it does not limit them to experimental propositions; (2) admitting the cosmological identity of social sciences, it maintains their critical approach not through reference to common sense conceptions _ which have a historical and merely cultural identity _ but through the two sources, practical reason and revelation. The above specifications are the characteristics of a kind of social science which can be called Islamic social science because of its benefiting from Islamic revelation and an appropriate methodology.
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