ALTERNATIVE FUTURES: THE POST SECULAR WORLD AND THE QUEST FOR A NEW

EPISTEMOLOGICAL GROUND

Syed Sadatullah Husaini

[To be presented at the Inaugural Ceremony of Ibn e Khaldun Institute of Social

Sciences, Kozhikode, Kerala on October 11, 2014]

I. Secular Worldview and Secular Epistemology

Let me start with a brief recapitulation of the journey of science and scientific
thought in the modern so called post-enlightenment era. The modern science
emerged out of a stiff conflict between church and the philosophers and started its
journey with a naturalist and physicalist ontological approach. It is nothing but the
belief that reality is composed solely of matter; the material world is all that exists;
and that all phenomena in universe can be explained in terms of natural causes. Any
belief about any super-natural existence was considered unscientific.

This ontological position resulted in the typical modernist epistemology. This

epistemology asserts that only scientific empirical method is the reliable source of
knowledge. The Humanist Manifesto II states,

Any account of nature should pass the tests of scientific evidence; in our judgment,
the dogmas and myths of traditional religions do not do so.1

This position was the result of The Newtonian worldview based on classical
mechanics. It assumed that all phenomena, including physical, biological, mental and
even social, are ultimately formed by matter and all that exists can be reduced and
subdivided to the ultimate levels of elementary particles. The time and space in
which such particles move and the natural laws governing their movement, is what
make distinguishing character of each type of matter. So even, human behavior was
understood in terms of chemical reactions taking place at physiological level.

Reductionism was the natural outcome of this mechanistic worldview.

Epistemological reductionism claims that the laws and theories of all the sciences are
in principle reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry. All complex systems were
considered as sums of components; so that their collective behavior is nothing but
the sums of the individual behaviors of each component. The materialists believe

1
AHA (1973) Humanist Manifesto-II American Humanist Association

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that all phenomena will eventually be explained in terms of the actions of material
components, which are the only effective causes in the world.

Some reductionists believed that the behavioral sciences can be made more
scientific based on genetic biology, and on the systematic study of cultures. Richard
Dawkins argued about "hierarchical reductionism" which meant that complex
systems can be described with a hierarchy of organizations, each of which is only
described in terms of objects one level down in the hierarchy. He provides the
example of a computer, which under hierarchical reductionism is explained in terms
of the operation of hard drives, processors, and memory, but not on the level of AND
OR gates, or on the even lower level of electrons in a semiconductor medium.2

This further evolved into what we call Determinism. Determinism argues that all
events, including conscious and moral choices, are fully determinable by previously
existing causes. Determinists believe that the universe is completely rational because
complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unmistaken knowledge of its
future is also possible. The present state of the universe is the effect of its previous
state and the cause of the state that follows it. If a mind, at any given moment, could
know all of the forces operating in nature and the respective positions of all its
components, it would thereby know with certainty the future and the past of every
entity, large or small.

When everything was empirically deterministic, there was no need of any other
source of knowledge. So arose, the positivism of Auguste Comte that maintained
that the data of sense experience are the only object and the supreme criterion of
human knowledge and there is no other source of knowledge except the sense
experience.

After much criticism positivism was evolved into logical positivism that accepted
logical reasoning also as a source of knowledge. So now only statements verifiable
either logically or empirically would be considered cognitively meaningful.

The main victim of this reductionist, determinists and positivist approach was
metaphysics, religion and religious sources of knowledge. It was argued that science
starts from reproducible public data. Theories are formulated and their implications
are tested against experimental observations. So religious beliefs are not acceptable,
in this view, because religion lacks such public data, such experimental testing, and

2
Dawkins, Richard (2013) The Blind Watchmaker Penguin UK

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such criteria of evaluation. Science alone is objective, open-minded, universal,
cumulative, and progressive. Religious traditions, by contrast, are said to be
subjective, closed-minded, parochial, uncritical, and resistant to change.

This mechanical approach to looking at things didnt remain confine to the natural
sciences. Gradually, even social sciences were also modeled after the methods of
physical sciences. The statistics and numbers became the main instruments of
sociological inquiry. Thou shalt not commit a value judgment became the guiding
dogma of the social scientists.

John Stuart Mill wrote:

"The backward state of the moral (human)

sciences can be remedied by applying to them the methods of physical science,
duly extended and generalized." 3

Another problem with this reductionist method was the claim of value neutrality.
Despite of the over-assertion on value neutrality, the materialistic values were
infused in a deceiving manner. The modern Social Science has many undeclared
dogmas at their very foundation. The idea of society as a steadily evolving civilization
(Social Darwinism), as a struggle for domination (conflict theory), as the creation of
meaning through interaction (Interactionism) or as an organism of contributing
elements (Structural Functionalism) can be listed among many such presumptions
without which modern social science will have no base. And all these things
constitute the value statements.

II. New Voices in Epistemology

The first major shock to this belief was caused by the Quantum Theory in early
part of the last century. This is about the phenomena at microscopic level. In classic
mechanics, all things were reducible to the level of an atom that had a nucleus at the
center and electrons circulating around it, like in a planetary system. Later scientists
realized that classical physics cannot explain the circulation of the electron around
the nucleus, because had Bohr model been true, the electrons should gradually lose
energy and fall down into the nucleus.

In the quantum mechanical understanding, the electron is more like a wave

3
As quoted in, Polkinghorne, Donald (1983) Methodology for the Human Sciences: Systems of Enquiry, New
York, SUNY press.

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around the nucleus than a particle. So the electron is not really a particle orbiting
around the nucleus, but rather more like a cloud that is spread evenly around. The
actual stuff is a neither a particle nor a wave and there is no way to completely
understand this actual stuff with measurements. The theory has been tested to such
a degree that it has become the scientific theory. The quantum theory has shown
that the old approach of a mechanical universe was an oversimplification employed
to explain the physics of the universe.

One of the most important consequences of this is that the quantum theory
refutes the main foundations of positivist philosophy, because as per Quantum
Theory, universe cannot be limited to what we observe. The very basic principle of
quantum physics shows, at least at the level of probability, that major part of our life
and the states of life are beyond the scope of our observation and the limit of our
understanding; and that there exist innumerable phenomena which are beyond our
access and we have no means of knowing about them using regular physical means.

So ultimately science had to confess its limitation, that in this physical

universe we are limited by the possible tools and we can never fully understand the
whole stuff of this universe and that there exist dimensions which are beyond
observable and measurable universe

It was a revolutionizing theory that shook the very foundation of modernist

western ontology and epistemology. As the famous astrophysicist Sir James Jeans
wrote,

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe

begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Human mind no
longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. 4

Many scientists, including atheists, started doubting the materialistic worldview. For
example, Nobel laureate, Eugene Wigner wrote;

While a number of philosophical ideas may be logically consistent with present

quantum mechanics, materialism is not.. 5
4
Jeans, James (2009) The Mysterious Universe Cambridge, Cambridge university Press
5
Wigner, Eugene as quoted in, Barr Stephen M (2010) Modern Physics and Ancient Faith Notre Dame,
University of Notre Dame Press.
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Also worth quoting is the observation of French theoretical physicist, Bernard
dEspagnat who wrote

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of
human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with
facts established by experiment.6

This new paradigm particularly affected the social sciences. Of late, the scholar began
to realize that human realm is different from the material realm and we cannot study
the human beings the way we study the material beings, and human being and
human society is not a machine to be studies purely in a mechanistic, reductionist,
positivist way.

English Physicist Prof. John Polkinghorne has convincingly identified five areas in
which the "human realm" is different, and suggested the appropriate research stance
corresponding to each.

a) its systemic character; hence, contextual relations are more important than those
among parts.
b) its unclear boundaries is the rule not the exception; hence, the inappropriateness
of deductive-numeric operations.
c) unfinished quality; the human realm is in flux, and has a history; hence,
correlations between elements may hold at one time but not at another.
d) composition, knowing humans is a "human" activity; hence, there is no absolute
point outside ourselves from which to investigate.
e) difficulty of access, the human realm is not directly observable from the outside, is
saturated with meaning, hence, we have to accept evidence with a different nature
other than observation.7

Thomas Kuhns influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, maintained

that both theories and data in science are dependent on the prevailing paradigms of
the scientific community and that science is not independent of dogmatic paradigms
so much so that present scientific facts can turn into myths with change of paradigm.

6
DEspagnat Bernard as quoted in ibid.
7
As quoted in Ragab Ibrahim A (2005) The Islamization of Social Sciences retrieved from
www.ibrahimragab.com on October 9, 2014

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 If these out-of date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by
the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to
scientific knowledge8

These developments affected the science and scientific methods as well. It was
realized that Science is not as objective as had been claimed. Scientific data are
theory-laden, not theory-free. Theoretical assumptions enter the selection,
reporting, and interpretation of what are taken to be data. Moreover, theories do
not arise from logical analysis of data but from acts of creative imagination in which
analogies and models often play a role.

If this is the case, then there exists no rational justification for denying the
metaphysical or religion based theories.

Hungarian polymath, Michael Polanyi has rightly argued that the emerging paradigm
is that of the harmony of method across a whole range of knowledge including
religious knowledge.

Polanyi holds that assessing the evidence is ultimately an act of open personal
judgment. Scientific activity is not subjective but it is definitely personal. Community
participation or peer review safeguards against subjectivity but it never removes the
burden of individual responsibility.

All these characteristics are even more important in religion. Here personal
involvement is greater, but not to the exclusion of rationality and universal intent.
Participation in the historical tradition and present experience of a religious
community is essential. 9

This has resulted into the surfacing of many voices of rebellion within the western
mainstream and helped the emergence of the new paradigm or so called post-
positivist paradigm. Now, human being is being perceived not just as a material
being. He is the combination of material, observable and empirical aspects and the
non-observable and non empirical aspects. Both the aspects are integrated into an
indivisible unity. It implies that human and social behaviors cannot be fully
understood by relying only on empirical methods.10

8
Kuhn, Thomas (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
9
Polanyi, Michael (2005)Personal Knowledge, Towards a Post Critical Philosophy London, Routledge
10
Lorimer, D. (1998) The Spirit of Science: From Experiment to Experience. Edinburgh: Floris Books

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I would conclude this survey with a special mention of American Physicist Fritjof Capra, who
has been an strong advocate of a new paradigm of scientific thinking.

(The ongoing transition) involves what is now often called a 'paradigmf shift' - a profound
change in the thoughts, perceptions, and values that form a particular vision of reality. The
paradigm that is now shifting has dominated our culture for several hundred years, during
which it has shaped our modern Western society and has significantly influenced the rest of
the world. This paradigm comprises a number of ideas and values that differ sharply from
those of the Middle Ages; values that have been associated with various streams of Western
culture, among them the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial
Revolution. They include the belief in the scientific method as the only valid approach to
knowledge; the view of the universe as a mechanical system composed of elementary
material building blocks; the view of life in society as a competitive struggle for existence;
and the belief in unlimited material progress to be achieved through economic and
technological growth. During the past decades all these ideas and values have been found
severely limited and in need of radical revision. These emerging paradigms also recognize the
importance of values in solving the sociological problems. 11

About the alternative paradigm he predicts,

If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to
its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but
also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent
mathematical formalism. 12

These emerging paradigms also recognize the importance of values in solving the
sociological problems.

As Tudor has rightly pointed,

"Science is a social activity like any other and thus subject to similar irrational
constraints and virtues"13.

The claims of exclusion of values or value-neutrality had resulted in the clandestine

functioning of values. This deception has caused more harm to the scientific inquiry
than the claims of the potential harm of value-inclusion. So in the new emerging
paradigms, value neutrality is being termed as hypocrisy and irresponsibility14. Now
11
Capra, Fritjof (1988)The Turning Point: Science, Society and Culture, New York, Simon and Schuster.
12
Capra, Fritjof (2010) The Tao of Physics, Boston, Shambhala.
13
Tudor, Andrew (1982) Beyond Empiricism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
14
Gray David J. (1966) Value free Sociology: a Doctrine of Hypocrisy and Irresponsibility in The Sociological
Quarterly Vol. 9, Issue 2, p 176-185

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social scientists are proposing that instead of false claims of value-neutrality, the
values on which a theory is built should be explicitly notified. This will solve the
purpose of scientific inquiry in more effective manner as the reader will judge the
theory based on the foundational values.15

III. Islamic Paradigm of Social Sciences

This utter failure of the so-called value neutral empirical social science creates huge
opportunity for fulfilling the long-cherished dream of an Islamic Social Science or the
Islamization of Social Science. Islamic Social Science doesnt negate the importance
of empirical data. But empirical source is only one of the sources of knowledge,
Rational and Revelational (Wahi) sources being other two important sources.

Islamic paradigm takes into account the holistic nature of human life.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutuglu has beautifully phrased Islamic paradigm, as
ontologically determined epistemology unlike the western model of
epistemologically determined ontology. He has rightly argued that this is the
fundamental contrast of weltanschauung (worldview) In the western proposition,
the reason-science-progress trio, enjoys supreme legitimacy. This self-perception
reduces all historical scientific developments and progress to the one-dimensional
view of knowledge found in Occidental civilization. This unilateral and one-
dimensional theory of knowledge is the primary reason for the prejudice that
assumes religious education is a primitive and outdated mode of knowledge transfer.
However, the Occidental one-dimensional theory of knowledge leads to social
conflict when applied to other civilizations.16

Prime Minister Davutoglu further argued that unlike Occidental civilization, Islamic
civilization relates religious knowledge to an authentic text, the Quran, rather than
an institution, preventing it from becoming the object of a sociopolitical and
socioeconomic power institution. Revelation is analyzed by objective linguistic
instruments rather than using subjective knowledge generated by a social institution
that claims sanctity. For this reason, religious epistemology did not lead to an anti-
scientific discourse, and scientific epistemology to an anti-religion discourse in
Islamic civilization. Islam attaches importance to reason, promoting scientific

15
Ryan Anne B, (2006) Post-Positivist Approaches to Research, MACE, p 12-26
16
Davutoglu Ahmet (1993) Alternative Paradigms: The Impact of Islamic and Western Weltanschauung on
Political Theory , Michigan, University Press of America

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endeavors. Davutolu holds that Islamic civilization's alternative conception of
knowledge and education suggests that the world may be understood through a
harmony of multidimensional sources of knowledge and that knowledge may not be
attributed to one single source alone. In order to overcome problematic approaches
Islamic civilization requires multidimensional scholarly leaders who embrace the
accumulated knowledge of civilizations.

The Islamic Social Science doesnt not, deceptively try to hide the values. It is value-
inclusive and overtly declares Islamic Worldview as the main foundation of the
discipline. It tries to understand the human behavior not by considering him a
machine but by considering him a cognitive-being that has the spiritual and
metaphysical elements embedded into a single indivisible unit along with the
physical and material elements.

The role of Islamic Social Scientist

The rescue from the narrow bandwidth of empiricism will enable an Islamic Social
Scientist to study the social problems freely. It will broaden the bandwidth and the
value-inclusion will make the social study more meaningful.

To make Islamic Social Science contribute to the level of its real worth, the Islamic
Scientists need to do work at many levels.

The first level is of the evolution of methods. It is still ambiguous as to how the
empirical, logical and revelational sources will interact in a balanced manner to
produce the most perfect outcome. Muslim Social Scientists need to debate the very
basic question of method and evolve a flawless method that is, unlike the
conventional empirical methods, perfectly in tune with the nature of the subject of
the study, (the human being).

The second level is theory building. The modern social sciences are based on well
articulated theories. The functionalism and conflict theory in sociology, social
Darwinism in political science and history and psychoanalysis in psychology are the
foundational theories that can be truly termed as the mothers of the western
versions of the respective disciplines. To evolve the alternative Islamic paradigms,
these theories will have to be challenged and new alternative theories will have to be
evolved.

The third level is what can be called as the evolution of brilliant ideas regarding the
practical solution to human problems. This will be the level of practical application of

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the Islamic Social Sciences. The post-positivist, the post-capitalist and the post-
feminist (rather anti-sexist) world is in dire and desperate want of brilliant ideas for
an alternative world.

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