Mardumʹshināsī-yi Tārīkhī-Shinākhī-yi ʻIlm dar Īrān

This work by Ibrāhīm Fayāz̤ applies a structural epistemological framework to examine the sociology of science in Īrān. Drawing on the holistic method of social inquiry, the study analyses the cultural-intellectual structures of the Ṣafavid era to explain why empirical sciences failed to flourish in Īrān. The inquiry is organised around epistemic coherence — the principle that a civilisation endures when its knowledge domains (art, literature, philosophy, popular culture, religion) mutually sustain one another. In the Ṣafavid period, these domains became progressively disconnected: Mullā Ṣadrā's abstract metaphysics, the Akhbārī movement in jurisprudence, and popular culture each pursued separate paths, precipitating decline. The second part identifies epistemic and structural causes for the failure of empirical sciences to take root, and the third examines why imported Western sciences were never indigenised, proposing conditions under which that process might succeed.