A scholar’s worldview shapes which subjects and methods they choose, not just their conclusions
Evidence
The character of research, and of new attitudes to research, depends obviously on the intentions of the researchers. The Russian Academician Mitin, in a speech at a conference on scientific-atheist propaganda, said, ‘In demonstrating the antiscientific character of Islam, we must at the same time take into consideration the part it is playing, under present-day conditions, when, under its banner, there are proceeding a number of movements of great progressive importance’; he added that ‘in the Eastern countries there are still a great many people whose religious sentiments are fused with their nationalist sentiments’. … It is obvious that the intention of the scientific-atheist propagandist is a special one which will affect his studies of Islam very much. Any approach to the subject from a special point of view, Marxist, ‘humanist’, Christian or Islamic, will affect, not only the opinions and the conclusions, but the actual choice of subjects to study and of methods of study. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1717 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
According to him, the Islamic Orient was spiritual, Semitic, tribalistic, radically monotheistic, un-Aryan: the adjectives resemble a catalogue of late-nineteenth-century anthropological descriptions. The relatively earthbound experiences of war, colonialism, imperialism, economic oppression, love, death, and cultural exchange seem always in Massignon’s eyes to be filtered through metaphysical, ultimately dehumanized lenses: they are Semitic, European, Oriental, Occidental, Aryan, and so on. The categories structured his world and gave what he said a kind of deep sense—to him, at least. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 695 (
#exemplifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: A researcher’s worldview shapes his choice of subjects and methods — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1717; Keeping the organic-intellectual ideal in view changes the character of scholarly work; A scholar’s decades inside a field he critiques shapes the character of its critique. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 7 (+2 more)
Related
- A researcher’s worldview shapes his choice of subjects and methods (similarity 0.90)
- Scholarship on the Orient filtered lived experience through racialized metaphysical categories (similarity 0.83)
- A scholar’s decades inside a field he critiques shapes the character of its critique. (similarity 0.80)
- Every standpoint, including atheist ones, distorts scholarly choice and method. (similarity 0.80)
- Said defined Orientalism as scholarship tied to governing the Middle East (similarity 0.80)
- Centuries of Orientalist scholarship have functioned as domination and violence (similarity 0.80)
- Western scholars controlled the academic study of the Orient even as late as 1927. (similarity 0.80)
- Western apprehension of Islam is moral and cosmological, not empirical. (similarity 0.79)
- Orientalist scholarship framed Islam as an antihuman civilization lacking self-knowledge (similarity 0.79)
- The definition of the Orient is inseparable from the Western scholar’s identity (similarity 0.79)
- Scholarly Orientalism telescoped textual detail into policy about the whole Orient (similarity 0.79)
- A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought (similarity 0.79)
- Orientalist scholarship was overwhelmingly dominated by Western scholars into the 1920s (similarity 0.79)
- Scholarly writing can mix objective method with personal spiritual intuition in two registers (similarity 0.79)
- Arab and Islamic studies resisted the 1960s scholarly revolutions that revised other area studies (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- A researcher’s worldview shapes his choice of subjects and methods
#corroborates(1.00) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1717 - Keeping the organic-intellectual ideal in view changes the character of scholarly work
#expands(0.82) - Scholarship on the Orient filtered lived experience through racialized metaphysical categories
#exemplifies(0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 695 - Methodological self-consciousness frees scholars from inherited ideological frameworks
#qualifies(0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 827 - A scholar’s decades inside a field he critiques shapes the character of its critique.
#complicates(0.73) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 7