Ethnocentrism of Thoughts and Watson's Solution (With Emphasis on Religious Studies)

Ethnocentrism of Thoughts, formation of knowledge within history and culture, is one of the epistemic difficulties of postmodernism. To overcome the epistemic problems and violence of Enlightenment, modernism was in search of an objective rationality and a value-free empiricism. Critiques of modernism showed that all branches of knowledge are ethnocentre. From the postmodern point of view, all observations are theory-laden, and scientists, research methods and problems, all are social constructions. Some scientists concluded that in the postmodern framework every scientific movement will fail. Some tried to account the influence of special rationalities on the process of investigation, and thus to be nearer to the objectivity. According to Watson, the beginning of this effort is to regard the ideological elements in the scientific researches. Therefore, the ideologies of the observed can be used to develop both normative and sociological hypotheses. Tests of these hypotheses, then, could be conducted with either an apologetic or an ethnocentric intent. The advantages of this approach would be the defense of rationality, a balanced objectivity, and the establishment of scientific democracy. Neglecting the difference between empirical and non-empirical studies in this research model can lead to reductionism.