The Relationship between Theory and Observation in Social Sciences according to Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy

The relationship between theory and observation is among the subjects to which various schools of social sciences give different responses based on their ontological and epistemological views. Due to the different viewpoints existing in Islamic philosophy about the resources and means of knowledge on one hand and about the levels of reality and knowledge on the other hand, the nature, theory, observation and, naturally, the relationship between theory and observation will be different. From the viewpoint of Islamic philosophy, there are different types of theory, empirical, rational, intuitive and transformational, and each type can have critical and normative dimensions. Obviously, each category of these theories belongs to an appropriate source and its character is evaluated. Therefore, "observation" alone is not a suitable source for any of these theories and a "test" can assess only some aspects of empirical theories.