The Place of the Super-material World and Super-material Factors in Ayatollah Javadi Amoli’s Theory of Religious Science

Ayatollah Javadi Amoli’s theory of religious science has recently attracted the attention of scholars. In this paper, we ask about the role of super-material world and super-material factors in the theory of religious science. In the first stage, we consider notions of “science” and “religion,” as well as attributes of “religious” and “scientific” and then the combined notion of “religious science” in his view, showing his meticulousness in the distinction between two levels of analysis—logico-philosophical and historico-sociological analyses of science. We then note that a crucial point in the debate over religious science is a hierarchical view of the world and the belief in a close tie between different worlds, which have both been captured in Ayatollah Javadi’s theory. The approach culminates in a critique of “methodological distinction” in sciences, replacing “subject-matter” with “methodological synthesis” as a criterion for the distinction of sciences in proportion to existential stages of the “subject-matter.” Thus, he proposes “methodological synthesis” as a practical way out of the present problems of sciences and out of theoretical impasses, although the subject-matter under question might be one-dimensional and thus, only in need of deploying a unique method. The outcome of this approach is what rightly deserves to be characterized as both scientific and religious.