Anthropology
Zeynab Shariatnia; Hadi Vakili
Abstract
The book History and Theory in Anthropology by Alan Barnard, a leading researcher and author of anthropological studies, especially anthropology in South Africa is among valuable works in the field of anthropology. In this book, he examines the theoretical nature of anthropology throughout history and ...
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The book History and Theory in Anthropology by Alan Barnard, a leading researcher and author of anthropological studies, especially anthropology in South Africa is among valuable works in the field of anthropology. In this book, he examines the theoretical nature of anthropology throughout history and the views of prominent scholars and thinkers of this science and their comparisons, as well as the rooting of theories and schools of thought presented in the field of anthropology. The purpose of this book is to examine the pioneering views of anthropological studies, evolution in all its dimensions, the theory of disseminators in cultural areas, functionalism and structural functionalism, pragmatic theories, processing, and Marxist views, various aspects of relativism, structuralism and post-structuralism, postmodernist views and recent interpretations. Although this work should be regarded as an overview of anthropological theories and related problems since it lacks the details of theorists, approaches, and ideas, its very briefness of the terms and contents, its conceptual clarity and explanation have been diminished and it requires revisions.
Methodology
Mohammad Nejadiran; Rozhan Hesam Ghazi
Abstract
The dominance of positivism over the philosophy of science in the first years of the twentieth century, due to its wave of criticism by some philosophers of science in the second half of this century, was in crisis and collapse. The views of scientific philosophers such as Popper, Cohen, and Lakatos ...
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The dominance of positivism over the philosophy of science in the first years of the twentieth century, due to its wave of criticism by some philosophers of science in the second half of this century, was in crisis and collapse. The views of scientific philosophers such as Popper, Cohen, and Lakatos provided the basis for the emergence of more radical critiques of the classical stream of the philosophy of science. In the same vein, Feyerabend tried to replace the previous approaches with a kind of methodological anarchism in his book, Against Method: The Anarchist Theory of Knowledge. According to her, there is no reasonable way to obtain and reject theories. In this book, she shows that trying to find rules for the logical reconstruction of the process of advancing science and proving and refuting theories is futile. In this research, while reviewing the mentioned book, an attempt has been made to evaluate some of the main views of the author in terms of form and content. The purpose of this work is to show the validity of the author’s radical claims in the philosophy of science and to assess its strengths and weaknesses. The method used in the critique of this descriptive-analytical work shows that Firand’s views, while in the field of philosophy of science as a new critical approach to the importance and privileged position, have unresolved conflicts to which they write. It has been overlooked, and it seems that those who follow his views in the philosophy of science should make more theoretical efforts to solve it.
Methodology
Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast
Volume 17, Issue 2 , September 2017, , Pages 1-17
Abstract
The book From Secular Science to Religious Science (Golshani, 1998/2013) is the result of an attempt to criticize the secular approach to science and call to a religious approach to science. The author has taken two steps in criticizing the secular approach. First, he argue that science needs ...
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The book From Secular Science to Religious Science (Golshani, 1998/2013) is the result of an attempt to criticize the secular approach to science and call to a religious approach to science. The author has taken two steps in criticizing the secular approach. First, he argue that science needs an orientation; an orientation that stems from the scientist’s worldview. In the meantime, the author criticizes positivism and attempts to show that science has metaphysical presuppositions. Second, the author argues that science needs morality in the application of scientific findings without which it leads to destruction. Using the methods of internal and external critique, this article argues that in spite of the author’s attention to the relationship between science and metaphysics, he has not been successful in the exploration of this relationship. This is because, on the one hand, he reduces the relationship to the application of findings and the realm of ethics and, on the other hand, he regards metaphysics as something that is added to science a posteriori. The very additional and a posteriori approach urges the author to take a neutral nature for science that, in its turn, shows that he has not completely freed himself from positivism. This article suggests that a proper conception of religious science regards an integrative relationship between science and metaphysics. Contrary to Reichenback, and Stanmark following him, this relationship does not lead science to the malign relativism even though a sound degree of relativism would involve science.