ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Philosophical Instructions Lesson Four: The Technical Meanings of “Science” and “Philosophy” Introduction In the first lesson it was indicated that the expression “philosophy” was applied from the beginning as a general term for all the true sciences (as opposed to conventional sciences), and in the second lesson we indicated that in the Middle Ages the realm of philosophy was extended to include some of the conventional sciences such as literature and rhetoric.

In the third lesson we learned that the positivists set scientific knowledge in opposition to philosophical and metaphysical knowledge, and they considered only the empirical science to be worthy of the name “scientific”. According to the first meaning, which was also prevalent in the Islamic period, philosophy has various divisions, each of which is called a special science, and naturally there was no conflict between science and philosophy.

However, the second meaning appeared in Europe during the Middle Ages, and was abandoned by the end of that period. According to the third meaning, which is presently current in the West, philosophy and metaphysics are set in opposition to science. Since this meaning also has gained currency to some extent in Eastern countries, it is necessary to explain something about science, philosophy and metaphysics and the relations among them.

Additionally, the divisions of the sciences and their classification will be mentioned. After the treatment of this topic, we will remark on some especially important points about equivocation, differences in meaning and the technical meanings of a word, neglect of which is a cause of much confusion and fallacy. Homonymity In all languages (as far as it is known), words can be found each of which has a literal meaning, a commonly accepted meaning and a technical meaning.

This is called homonymity, ishtirāk al-lafẓī . For example, in Farsi, the term dūsh has the meaning of ‘last night’, ‘shoulder’ and ‘shower’, and the term shīr is used for ‘lion’, ‘milk’ and ‘faucet’. The existence of homonymity plays an important role in literature and poetry, but in science, and particularly in philosophy, it brings about many difficulties, especially since the different meanings for a word are often so close to each other that distinguishing them becomes difficult.

Many errors are made due to this sort of homonymity, and occasionally even authorities fall into this trap.