Contrasting Epistemics
Rationale and ContextThe idea of a Contrasting Episteme, as it is conceived in a series ofessays on this theme: is suggested as an approach to grounding the matrixof inquiry in the social sciences in a new spatial zone of conceptual affinities.By carrying the debate in the disciplines to its epistemic foundations, andby conceding the possibility of divergences within these foundations alongthe lines of basic types, it becomes possible to postulate alternative validconceptions of social science compatible with different intellectual traditionsof inquiry. In the field of the Islamization of knowledge, a critical awarenessof such alternatives is all the more necessary for partisans and skeptics alike.Given the critical reconstructionist orientation of that movement it is importantto know what it finds objectionable in a given system of knowledge (andits products), and on what basis it justifies its claims to an alternative system,as well as to define the contours of such an alternative.The claim that the prevailing intellectual tradition which conditions thevarious disciplines of social and humanistic studies is anaemic in values,or that it is contested simply in terms of value-incompatibility, is too facileto justify a movement for cultural reconstruction on the scale envisaged. Itleads to the naive contentions that all that Islamization requires is to adda dose of Islamic values (which ultimately constitute a universal and general ...