From Asad Zaman Foundations for modern social sciences were laid in the early twentieth century, and were strongly influenced by logical positivism. The central idea of positivism is that science is true and valid because it deals (principally) with observables, while religion is false and invalid because it deals (principally) with unobservables. For a detailed discussion, see “Logical Positivism and Islamic Economics“. Later, logical positivism had a spectacular collapse. It became clear to philosophers of science that the idea that we can base science purely on observables was seriously mistaken. Even those who were very strong proponents of positivism admitted that the philosophy was wrong. Strangely, this did not lead to rebuilding of the foundations for the social sciences.
Topics:
Asad Zaman considers the following as important: Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
Stavros Mavroudeas writes CfP of Marxist Macroeconomic Modelling workgroup – 18th WAPE Forum, Istanbul August 6-8, 2025
Lars Pålsson Syll writes The pretence-of-knowledge syndrome
Dean Baker writes Crypto and Donald Trump’s strategic baseball card reserve
Lars Pålsson Syll writes How economists forgot the real world
from Asad Zaman
Foundations for modern social sciences were laid in the early twentieth century, and were strongly influenced by logical positivism. The central idea of positivism is that science is true and valid because it deals (principally) with observables, while religion is false and invalid because it deals (principally) with unobservables. For a detailed discussion, see “Logical Positivism and Islamic Economics“. Later, logical positivism had a spectacular collapse. It became clear to philosophers of science that the idea that we can base science purely on observables was seriously mistaken. Even those who were very strong proponents of positivism admitted that the philosophy was wrong. Strangely, this did not lead to rebuilding of the foundations for the social sciences. Especially in economics, the wrong philosophies about nature of human knowledge, which translate into bad theoretical models, continue to be used. read more