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The Iranian MetaphysicalsExplorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny$
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The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny

Alireza Doostdar

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780691163772

Published to Princeton Scholarship Online: September 2018

DOI: 10.23943/princeton/9780691163772.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM PRINCETON SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.princeton.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Princeton University Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in PRSO for personal use.date: 21 May 2022

Scientific Virtues

Scientific Virtues

Chapter:
(p.123) 13 Scientific Virtues
Source:
The Iranian Metaphysicals
Author(s):

Alireza Doostdar

Publisher:
Princeton University Press
DOI:10.23943/princeton/9780691163772.003.0015

This chapter examines how modern science provided the imaginative resources used by some moral reformers to define their own qualifications in terms of the virtues proper to scientific practice. Historians of science have long recognized the centrality of certain virtues and their atendant sensibilities and modes of comportment for disciplined scientific activity. The chapter first considers Mirza Khalil Khan Saqafi's contention that Spiritism taught forgiveness, sacrifice, charity, patience, duty, and respect for the Golden Rule, among other virtues, before discussing his moral ideas and his scientific interest in spirit communication as well as Naser Makarem Shirazi's views on the scientific virtues. It also describes Makarem's emphasis on the virtue of skepticism as proper to scientific discovery. Whereas Khalil Khan had discovered positive moral facts through his séances with the spirits of the dead, Makarem undercut such claims to moral truth—which he saw as anarchic—by discrediting the séance.

Keywords:   science, Mirza Khalil Khan Saqafi, Spiritism, virtue, Naser Makarem Shirazi, skepticism, scientific discovery, séances, spirit, moral reform

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