Toward An Ummatic Paradigm for Psychology

Abstract

Toward an Ummatic Paradigm for Psychology
Before writing a textbook in a specific scientific discipline one has to remind
one that a textbook is but a compilation of data based on research conducted
by a group of researchers dealing with different topics in a specific
discipline. Research is therefore the most important part of the series of activities
that should be done in the field of psychology before the textbook
writers in psychology are able to do their work. Before the researchers can
function properly, however, they have to bear in mind the diversity of
research methodologies under which their approaches will be categorized.
The most dominant of these are the realist and the idealist approaches. The
following is an attempt to highlight these approaches and to suggest some approaches
by which we hope Muslim researchers will be able to create the ummatic
paradigm.
Much of the uncertainty surrounding the social sciences can be traced to
the question of the purpose of science. J. K. Smith suggests that confusion
over the appropriate goals and methodologies for social science can be linked
to an epistemological conflict which is currently dividing social scientists. I
Smith characterizes this epistemological dispute as a conflict between the
realist and idealist positions. He describes the followers of realist
epistemology as believing that the purpose of science is to discover universal
truth. Scientists who have adopted the realist position believe that “knowledge
and truth are questions of correspondence - what is true is what corresponds
to reality,” (p. 8) The ultimate goal of the realists in the social sciences is to
discover universally true laws that can be communicated through a neutral,
culture-free language and that can be applied in any situation to predict,
understand, and govern behavior. The realists believe that it is “possible to
have a definitive, objective science for all society that would eventually produce
the system of laws [and that these] laws are, by definition, universally
applicable, regardless of time and place.” (pp. 8, 11) ...