Abstract:
In the past decades, the philosophy of science has had an undeniable impact on the field of "religious science" in Iran. A group of thinkers have drawn on various schools of philosophy of science—ranging from logical positivism to the historicism of Kuhn and Feyerabend—in order to formulate "religious science" or at least demonstrate its "possibility." This article examines three books—The Identity of Religious Science, Meaning, Possibility, and Strategies for Realizing Religious Science, and The Ijtihad Paradigm of Religious Knowledge—and shows that these works face three fundamental problems: first, a failure to refer to primary and authoritative sources in the philosophy of science, relying instead on incomplete translations or second-hand accounts; second, a lack of careful reflection on the views of philosophers such as Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend; and third, misinterpretations of concepts such as "falsifiability," "theory-ladenness of observations," and "incommensurability." In conclusion, it is shown that these shortcomings have caused discussions on religious science to become trapped in theoretical misunderstandings rather than addressing the core question (the why of seeking religious science), leaving practical strategies for its realization still shrouded in ambiguity.
Keywords: Religious Science, Philosophy of Science, Theory-ladenness, Incommensurability, Paradigm, Islamic Science, Epistemology.


Introduction

The idea of "religious science" emerges from a perceived tension between the epistemic authority of modern Western science and the normative commitments of Islamic faith. While some intellectuals have conceded that science and religion operate in incommensurable domains, others have attempted to reconcile them—either by forcing religious propositions into the straitjacket of empirical verification/falsification, or by reinterpreting the very nature of scientific knowledge to accommodate metaphysical and theological presuppositions. The latter strategy has heavily relied on post-positivist philosophies of science, especially the arguments that observations are theory-laden, that science is not value-neutral, and that scientific paradigms are historically conditioned. These ideas, it is claimed, open a "window of possibility" for a genuinely religious science—one whose foundational concepts, models, and explanatory frameworks are inspired by divine revelation and Islamic worldview. Yet, as this paper contends, the way these philosophical resources have been used in the Iranian context reveals a pattern of superficial engagement, citation of secondary or defective translations, conceptual conflation, and logical fallacies. The result has been a theoretical discourse that remains decoupled from both the historical realities of scientific practice and the urgent socio-technological challenges that originally motivated the quest for religious science.

Materials & Methods

This study is a qualitative, critical philosophical analysis of three seminal Persian texts that have shaped the religious science debate in Iran:

1. Khosrow Bagheri, The Identity of Religious Science: An Epistemological Perspective on the Relation of Religion to the Humanities (1st ed. 2003; cited 2011).
2. Hossein Sozenchi, Religious Science: Meaning, Possibility, and Strategies for Realization (2010).
3. Mahdi Alipour & Seyyed Hamidreza Hasani, The Ijtihad Paradigm of Religious Knowledge (2010).

The methodological approach consists of: (a) close reading of these texts to identify how they cite, interpret, and apply key concepts from philosophy of science (e.g., falsifiability, paradigm, theory-ladenness, incommensurability); (b) cross-referencing their claims against primary and authoritative secondary sources in Western philosophy of science (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, and the Edinburgh School); (c) examining the logical coherence of the arguments built upon these philosophical imports; and (d) assessing whether the philosophical framework is adequate to the stated goal of grounding a "religious science." The analysis focuses not on the theological validity of religious science but strictly on the philosophical rigor and accuracy of its methodological justifications.

Discussion &Result

The findings reveal three recurrent and interrelated categories of error across the examined works.

First: Deficient Source Use. All three books rely heavily on Persian translations that are widely acknowledged among specialists to be flawed or incomplete—for instance, Ahmad Aram's translation of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations and Abbas Taheri's translation of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Moreover, many citations refer to introductory or popularizing works rather than to primary philosophical treatises or peer-reviewed commentaries. Sozenchi, for example, critiques the Edinburgh School's sociology of scientific knowledge almost exclusively through a Persian secondary source (Saeed Zibakalam's Social Epistemology) rather than engaging directly with Barnes, Bloor, or Shapin. This bibliographic fragility undermines the reliability of the critiques and leaves the authors vulnerable to misrepresenting the very positions they oppose.

Second: Superficial and Distorted Interpretation. Bagheri devotes over 100 pages to summarizing positivist and post-positivist schools, yet in his concluding argument for the meaningfulness of religious science, he employs only the thesis of theory-ladenness and the criterion of meaningfulness—leaving the vast majority of his philosophical exposition functionally redundant. More critically, he applies models originally designed for the physical sciences (physics, chemistry) to the human sciences (psychology, education) without any methodological justification, ignoring well-known debates about the distinct character of social and humanistic inquiry. Sozenchi, meanwhile, assumes a sharp dichotomy between the "logical-philosophical" and "historical-sociological" dimensions of science, treating them as separate and hierarchically ordered, whereas the very point of authors like Kuhn and the Edinburgh sociologists is to dissolve that dichotomy. By imposing his own framework onto their work, Sozenchi commits a classic straw-man fallacy: he criticizes a position that his targets never held.

Third: Conceptual and Logical Fallacies. Alipour and Hasani's treatment of Kuhn's paradigm concept is particularly problematic. They acknowledge that Kuhn, following Wittgenstein, eschewed a precise definition of "paradigm," yet they proceed to demand a rigorous definition and then critique Kuhn for failing to provide one. They also deploy the "self-referential inconsistency" argument—claiming that Kuhn's theory, being itself theory-laden, is self-undermining—without realizing that Kuhn never claimed his historical account was theory-neutral. This is a textbook example of the straw-man fallacy (or pahlavān-pambe, as the author terms it in Persian). Furthermore, they assert that Kuhn and his followers commit a category error by extrapolating from historical description ("what has happened") to philosophical prescription ("what ought to count as knowledge"), but they fail to substantiate why such a move is inherently fallacious, or why science should be evaluated against a transcendental "reality-as-it-is" (nafs al-amr) that Kuhn explicitly rejects.

Taken together, these deficiencies indicate that the Iranian religious-science discourse has not genuinely engaged with the philosophy of science as a critical, self-reflexive discipline. Instead, it has selectively mined philosophical schools for rhetorical ammunition to defend a pre-established theological conclusion—namely, that religious science is possible—rather than allowing philosophical inquiry to reshape the problem itself.

Conclusion

The article concludes that the philosophical scaffolding built for religious science in these works is theoretically unsound and practically barren. The misuse of philosophy of science has produced three negative outcomes:

1. Epistemic confusion: Concepts such as falsifiability, paradigm, and theory-ladenness are stripped of their original technical meanings and reduced to vague slogans.
2. Logical incoherence: Arguments are plagued by equivocation, circular reasoning, and straw-man tactics, making them immune to constructive criticism.
3. Practical irrelevance: Despite decades of philosophical debate, no concrete scientific research program, technological innovation, or educational reform has emerged from this discourse. The fundamental question—why do we need religious science?—remains unasked and unanswered.

The author provocatively draws a comparative analogy: Indigenous peoples possess rich empirical knowledge of medicinal plants, traditional Chinese medicine includes sophisticated practices like acupuncture, and certain African tribes can locate underground water sources—yet no one proposes "Islamic botany" or "Islamic hydrology." The reason modern science is uniquely valued is not its epistemic purity but its technological power—its capacity to produce skyscrapers, satellites, smartphones, and nuclear energy. Over the past century, Iran has imported Western technology, then Western science, and finally Western humanities, assuming these were neutral tools that could be adapted to local values. But this assumption is naive: technology and science are not value-neutral; they embody and transmit cultural worldviews. The failure to recognize this has led to a reactive, defensive posture that seeks to "Islamize" science from the outside, rather than fostering an indigenous scientific tradition grounded in genuine engagement with both Islamic intellectual heritage and contemporary global science.

Ultimately, the paper urges a shift in focus: instead of endlessly debating the philosophical possibility of religious science, Iranian intellectuals should confront the real challenges of scientific underdevelopment, technological dependency, and cultural transformation—and draw upon the philosophy and sociology of science not as a toolbox for legitimation, but as a critical mirror for understanding how science actually functions in society. Only then can the religious-science discourse move from abstract apologetics to concrete, context-sensitive problem-solving.