Philosophy-science in the thought of Al-Ghazali, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and İbn Khaldun

Classical history of science, perceiving science as a singular and universal structure, has investigated the history of science and thought through the lens of a monolithic conception of science. However, such an approach negates the existence of scientific paradigms that fall outside the framework of Modern Science and precludes the possibility of their investigation. With the gradual interrogation of classical historiography, the notion that science is not an independent reality separate from the scientists who practice it, but rather a "structure of ideas upon which scientists reach consensus," has gained prominence. This dissertation aims to demonstrate, by examining the history of science from such a consensual foundation, that Al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and Ibn Khaldûn were representatives of the philosophy-science tradition of their respective epochs. To this end, the conceptualization of "philosophy-science" (felsefe-bilim) introduced into Turkish by Teoman Duralı has been employed. The first chapter of this three-part dissertation investigates the possibility of such a tradition and how it can be distinguished from other philosophy-science traditions. In the second section, the epistemologies of Al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, who are considered the two founding thinkers of this tradition, are examined in terms of their understanding of the knower, the known, and knowledge. The third chapter delineates what kind of philosophy-science system emerges from the obtained data and examines its connections with Ibn Khaldūn's epistemology and the Science of Civilization (ʿIlm al-ʿUmrān). The findings of this investigation demonstrate that Al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi were the thinkers who established the metatheory of the scientific understanding of their era. They approached the human, existence, and knowledge from a framework of shared presuppositions. Ibn Khaldûn, as a follower of this tradition, drew upon their philosophy-science system, and the epistemological framework of this tradition played a significant role in the emergence of the Science of Civilization.