Review and Criticism of From Secular Science to Religious Science

Bagheri Noaparast, Khosrow

Review and Criticism of From Secular Science to Religious Science

Document Type : Research

Author

Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast

University of Tehran, Faculty of Psychology and Education, Department of Philosophical and Social Foundations

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 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.

Keywords

Secular Science

Religious Science

Mehdi Golshani

Metaphysical Presuppositions

Relativism

Morality

Subjects

Methodology

باقری، خسرو (1374)، «هویت علم دینی»، فصل‌نامۀ حوزه و دانشگاه، ش 3.

باقری، خسرو (1382)، هویت علم دینی: نگاهی معرفت‌شناختی به نسبت دین با علوم انسانی، تهران: وزارت ارشاد و فرهنگ اسلامی.

جوادی آملی، عبدالله (1372)، شریعت در آینۀ معرفت، قم: مرکز نشر فرهنگی رجاء.

گلشنی، مهدی (1392)، از علم سکولار تا علم دینی، تهران: پژوهشگاه علوم انسانی و مطالعات فرهنگی.

Al-Attas, S.M.N. (1979), Aims and Objectives of Islamic Education, London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Al-Faruqi, I.R. (1988), “Islamization of Knowledge: Problems, Principles and Prospective”, in: Islam: Source and Purpose of Knowledge, Herndon, Virginial: International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Brooke, J.H. (1996), “Religious Belief and the Natural Sciences: Mapping the Historical Landscape”, in: Facets of Faith and Science, Van der Meer, J.M. (ed.), vol 1, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.

Clouser, R.A. (2005), The Myth of Religious Neutrality: an Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories, Revised edition, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press.

Dooyeweerd, H. (1979), Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular and Christian Options, Toronto: Wedge Publ. Foundation.

Harrison, P. (2007), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lakatos, A. (1970), “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes”, in: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, Lakatos, L. and A. Musgrave (eds.), Cambridge University Press.

MacKay, D.M. (1974), “Complimentarity in Scientific and Theological Thinking”, Zygon, Journal of Religion and Science, vol 9 (3).

Watkins, J. (1958), “Influential and Confirmable Metaphysics”, Mind, vol 67.