METHODOLOGY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Year:2012 | Volume:17 | Issue:69|Papers Count:8

Alvin Plantinga believes there are some kinds of conflicts between some deliverances of science and religious beliefs. To correct, on one hand, misinterpretations of the Scripture and, on the other hand, wrong scientific claims, he proposes, we must use in science all of what we know: what we find through experience, as well as what we know by way of faith. Methodological naturalism, one of methodological assumptions of scientific practice, prevents us to achieve this goal. According to methodological naturalism, scientists can’t use supernatural explanation, evidence and concept in science. In addition to rejecting methodological naturalism, Plantinga maintains many theories in humanities apply normative concepts and definitions; and religion can be used as a source for this concepts and definitions. Consequently, Plantinga’s idea, Augustinian Science, has been based on four principles: using hermeneutical finding along with empirical evidence in science; rejecting methodological naturalism; using normative concepts and definitions which comes from religious world view, in theories which need them; assuming properly basic beliefs of believers.

Some scholars have not believed the division of economics into Islamic and non-Islamic; though, it can be considered Islamic in the context of gathering data, but science production relates to the context of judgment. In this context, as an answer to the question of the existence of Islamic or non-Islamic economics, there exists just one reality which does not accept any attribute such as Islamic or non-Islamic. Through this article, it is tried to find a response for the above-mentioned problem via describing Islamic economics as a branch of economics. The philosophical foundations for underlying this branch of science are the effects that special contingents (i’tibarat) of Islamic doctrine have on economic behaviors and variables.

Dominant methodological rules and the importance of values and ethics in scientific paradigms are the main issues debated through scientific social responsibility. So, social responsibility of science is methodological and axiological foundations of any area of science that commitment to them reflects scholar's social responsibility. In western paradigms, social responsibility of science involved different and paradoxical foundations, while in the Islamic worldview, referring to reality and constructing social theory, are based on the Tawhidi epistemology. This harmony is the unconditional and unchangeable rule of Islamic thought. In the Islamic thought, human's responsibility in front of God (SWT), self and society are regarded as a value concept and all people, specifically, social scholars are considered responsible to construct their social world based on these types of concepts. These value concepts, beneficial science and Tawhidi epistemology make differences between scientific social responsibility in Islam and dominant paradigms of occidental sciences.

Academic circles have believed that science and ethics cannot be separated, so the students are taught to learn research ethics and apply the rules of ethical conduct in their term papers and theses or dissertations. From this point of view, the writer of this paper conducted a research on the research books that are written in Persian, to discover the amount of presence of research ethics in these books and the coverage of the issues facing the students in the process of their research. The result shows that the positivistic approach concerning the distinction between facts and value is still dominant in most of these educational books, and they have not freed themselves from this positivistic heritage. In the end, the writer has proposed a solution for overcoming this ethical and educational problem.

In this article the concept of explanation has been described etymologically and terminologically. Then we classified the philosophy of social sciences into ontological and epistemological approaches. In ontological approach, we introduced five methodologies including individualism, holism, dialecticism, systemism and realism. Concerning the epistemological approach, we introduced two explanation models including deductive and inductive models. Based on the same approach, various methods of explanation are classified and introduced briefly. This article aimed to draw a general scheme of explanation methods and determines their extents in regard to other methods.

Full understanding of organizations and doing integrated organization studies and analyses depend on careful attention to the social and cultural context of organizations. So, discourse analyses as a qualitative research strategy which considers situational context of organizations and takes into accounts that “imaginations” and “experiences” are constructed by language assists researchers to achieve this goal. Thus the purposes of this article are first; to explain the theoretical perspectives of discourse and discourse analysis, second; determining the paradigmatic position of this approach and third; describing the course of action.

Explanation of essential requisites for designing national indices of administrative corruption in Iran necessitates the study, classification and criticism of the existing indices for the assessment of administrative corruption based on the historical career, practical levels, examples of administrative corruption and methodological approaches has been used in their designing. To do, it is necessary to have a comparative study on the indices and methodological necessities for designing national indices of such an explanation. The results of this research paper are summarized as follow: the obligation for designing national indices, investigating the phenomena being assessed, benefitting from rich theoretical foundations, necessity for methodology of designing the indices, considering the importance of the resources for gathering data and combining the qualitative and quantitative data, ensuring the access to the valid data, accepting the necessity for various assessments or supplementary assessments, caring about the poor and vulnerable groups and finally, the necessity for accepting the responsibility of acquired index.