Investigating The Sources of Knowledge based on the Theory of Max Scheller from the Viewpoint of Rasht Residents

Scheller believed in co-existence of three kinds of knowledge namely Religion, Metaphysics and Positivism in a society. Estimating the portion of each one of these in knowledge sphere of a certain society has not been studied. This research is aimed to evaluate the significance of knowledge types in different fields of social life of Rasht residents based on Scheller's theory. Metaphysical knowledge was not of our concern due to a high similarity between Metaphysic and Religion; and as the pilot study showed, this kind of knowledge has no association as it is meant by Scheller. In qualitative stage interviews were carried out with critical persons in both religious and scientific knowledge. 10 clerics and 17 university professors guarantee the saturation of the information in different aspects of life including preferred number of children to have, gender based division of labor in family, gender based differentiation in sexual behavior, religiosity (individual and plural), politics, leisure time, morality and believe in humanism and science. Then the prepared questionnaires were filled by a sample of 394 in quantitative stage of study. Results suggest that in some aspects like pluralistic religiosity, morality and attitude toward science, respondents agreed more with clerics arguments, and in rest of aspects, majority of them agreed with university professors.