On the Theory of the Development of Science in Iran: Axioms and Postulates from Humanities and Social Sciences
15 Pages Posted: 22 Aug 2010
Date Written: August 21, 2010
Abstract
Primarily, this paper was produced to answer some critical questions raised by student association of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran in fall 2008. The questions concerned issues such as the causes of assumingly underdevelopment of Humanities and Social Sciences in Iran. Later on, I took the cause as my personal problematic and developed it into a scholarly paper and took into consideration the socio-political developments that took place in 2009. They raised three questions that I have tried to answer them in this paper and these questions are as follows: 1: What are the main obstacles for the Social Sciences in Iran that must be dealt with in order for the Social Sciences to be recognized? 2: To what extent the social scientists in comparison to scholars from other disciplines have been able to produce knowledge? and 3: Are Iranian social scientists able to participate in collection actions so the results be led to offering solutions for socio-economic and media-communication problems of Iran?
I have used ethnographic, phenomenological as well as intensive interview data collection to come up with some possible and plausible answers.
I have developed some 24 axioms and postulates that I consider them as necessary elements in addressing the problematic of scientific underdevelopment in Iran in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. In the end I have come up with some solutions that if considered can result in the development of science in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. Also I have offered some propositions that I have used them to organize a theoretical framework that can be used to explain the development of Humanities and Social Sciences and its obstacles in Iran.
Keywords: Epistemological Break, Iranian Indigenous Knowledge, Problematic of Science
JEL Classification: D7
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