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) ...