METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Year:2009 | Volume:15 | Issue:59|Papers Count:8

In this paper, I consider the idea of indigenous-ism and in particular, religious-ism in science from an epistemological point of view. According to the deontological approach in epistemology, every believer has to attempt to have a consistent-in the stronger version, a coherent-set of beliefs. Furthermore, every believer has central beliefs within the set of his beliefs. Religious beliefs constitute an important section of central beliefs for members of religious communities. In such a situation, if scientific beliefs of these religious persons or some interpretations of these scientific beliefs are inconsistent with their religious central beliefs, these persons would attempt to reconstruct the current scientific theories and even to construct new theories in the way of performing their epistemic duties. Therefore, we can consider the idea of religious-ism in science as a kind of performing the epistemic duty of consistency and coherence; a process which has a sound motivation and reasonable theoretical grounds.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, research about learning, perception, cognitive development, intelligence and motivation theories has started. In this regard, western scholars have adopted positivism as the basis of their epistemological and research methodology. Unfortunately, during conducting their research projects, they have neglected the metaphysical presumptions of human behaviors and characteristics. As a result, a sketchy image of human potentials and his/her nature has been depicted.The present article proposes that the previous conducted research works should be evaluated so as to identify their epistemological bases. It is also suggested that the application of positivism-based psychological and educational researches into the educational system of our society should take place with care and caution. The author argues that the dominance of secularism-based positivism in our educational system will hinder the system from achieving its main goal of preparing human being to live in the present world and the hereafter. Furthermore, steps should be taken to identify and elaborate research methodologies consistent with religious teachings so as to provide guidelines for leading research activities in psychology and education. 

The aims of the present paper are:1. Appraisal of scientific progress in Iranian macroeconomic works of research, using Laudan's methodological approach, named the problem-solving approach.2. The process of improvement in macroeconomic works of research is due to interaction of these four major factors: views, evidence, technical methods, and macroeconomic scientific society.In this research, we have found that the majority of Iranian macroeconomic research works are on empirical applications, rather than intellectual problems and most of them are not broad enough based upon sound and accurate data.To explore multidimensional aspects of macroeconomics, research works are focused on narrow spectrum of macroeconomic phenomena and those have not provided the background for scientific advancement in macroeconomic analyses. Often, the proposed views are not specific enough, and mathematical tools and econometric techniques are excessively being used and often they serve as goals rather than means of performing research.

Heidegger's philosophy of science is controversial. Some regard him as a realist. One of their reasons is that in his view the subject matter of science is independent from scientific methods. And others regard him as a relativist. That is because, as they state, science is only possible in some general horizon of every period. Some see agreement between the first and the second Heidegger's philosophy of science, because they consider him to be a realist or a relativist throughout. And others see difference between them, for example, because he first stressed on "deworlding" and then denied that. Some claim for different reasons that what Thomas Kuhn called "paradigm," "normal science," and "scientific revolution" in his philosophy of science had been introduced by Heidegger, and others disagree with such claims. In this paper, we explain and analyze the views of five scholars about these topics.

It is important to consider the ethical aspects of educational research, beside its other aspects (such as methodological, philosophical, sociological and structural aspects). That is because the negation or disregard of ethical aspects of educational research can propose challenges, threats or obstacles to performing quality research. These obstacles or threats include: incorrect interpretation of research result, manipulating of data for achieving specific and intended outcome, and misusing results for political, social and economical aims by governments. In order to prevent those challenges or obstacles, researchers must consider ethical issues of educational research such as the ethical principles and rules of the research at hand. Personal characteristics of researchers, for example, having moral virtue also has the main role in research. This paper studies the role and status of ethical dimensions of educational research in educational institutions.

Imre lakatas presented a theory in order to appraise methodologies and to select the better one. This theory, which was called meta-methodology by philosophers, is based on some characters he believes a good methodology need to have and is inspired by his methodology (MSRP). Appealing to the history of science, this meta-methodology was to help us to choose the best mythology among all the methodologies and help historiographers to reconstruct history precisely as well. After reviewing this meta-methodology's structure, the paper criticizes its operation to apprise methodologies and find the better methodologies, and their attainments to their propose. The paper also considers some problems that the meta-methodology is encountered with in appealing to actual history and scientists' views, as well as the vicious circle rises when Lakatos is using them in the meta-methodology.

The laws of nature appear to have a central role in scientific practice, so it is an important issue for philosophers of science to examine different views regarding the law of nature. There are many theses developed in this regard which the famed Humean Supervenienceis reviewed in this paper. Tooley and Carroll's thought experiments are explained and their considered conclusions are judged. Moreover, the governing intuition about the natural laws is inspected and the Rumean approach is vindicated.