A Critical Assessment of the Issues of Objectivity and Subjectivity in Contemporary Western Socio-Behavioral Thought and its Muslim Khaldunian Counterpart

Abstract

The issues of objectivity and subjectivity in the contemporary knowledge
of the behavioral and the social sciences repment a highly contmemial debate
whose solution has defied all attempts by those who have tackled it with
analysis and discussion. There are presently four causes of bias which afflict
the modern behavioral and social sciences.
1) Numerous studies in this field have explained the social
scientist’s inevitable bias as emanating from personality
subjective factors. The sociologist or the psychologist,
accordmg to this view, can’t entirely liberate himself or herself
from individual inclinations, values, and interests in going
about studying the phenomena which belong to each field.
Total objectivity in the sciences of man and society is beyond
human reach according to the German sociologist, Max
Weber.
2) In spite of the impartant role played by the social scientist’s
personality subjective factors in the making of his or her
scientific bias, these factors are not, nonetheless, the only
forces which determine the phenomenon of bias in
contemporary behavioral and social sciences. Scientific bias
could be the outcome as well of a collective or an institutioml ...