A preliminary attempt to compare the epistemological frameworks of the scientific traditions in the West and in Islam

• Main Author: Saparmin, Norzakiah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Eubios Ethics Institute 2010
• Subjects: QA Mathematics
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/23687/1/The_Teaching_of_Ethics_at_KOE.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/23687/; http://www.eubios.info/EJAIB112010suppICEP.pdf

Scientific activities are done with the assumption that the natural world is ordered through systematic laws that can be discovered by the human mind. Nature can be known in certainty apart from the perspective of the observer, and only then can science proceed. This dualistic vision of nature is widely accepted by the Western philosophy of science, but however, not without any objection. The first half of this paper then would delineate of how Descartes, and how it then later emerged as an epistemological problem and brought into a new insight by Kant. Many other philosophers then, especially the Romantics and the Existentialists such as Goethe, Hegel, Heidegger and the depth psychoanalyst Jung with his archetypal psychology tried to give a more integrated epistemology than the simple mathematical and dualistic vision that had been proposed by Descartes. All these attempts have a common belief that ultimately the relationship of man with nature, epistemologically, is participatory, instead of dualistic. We will delineate further as a general overview, and by using Jungian archetypal psychology as our base, of what does participatory epistemology mean. On the other hand, in the second half of the paper, we will focus on how Islamic epistemology responds to this Descartes dualistic vision and we will see of how Islamic epistemology had already proposed a complex resolution in order to overcome this dualistic vision without overthrowing the basic hierarchy that separates man and nature. Our main source of reference is Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib al- Attasʼs philosophy of science in Islam which we believe is enough to fulfill the purpose of our paper.