Ibn Haldun Conference Series for high school students have started with participation of speakers who are experts in respective fields. At the first event of this conference series on Wednesday, January 9th we hosted many students from High Schools of Başakşehir and nearby neighborhood. Conference was held at our Başakşehir Campus at Mukaddime Hall.
Our President Prof. Recep Şentürk delivered a speech titled “Social Scientist: The Observer in The Test Tube” in Sociology field. He also presented on “What does a social scientist do, why and how?” Prof. Şentürk pointed out that basically social sciences are divided into two major parts; positivism and idealism. Positive thinking promotes empirical learning and possibility of perceiving natural and social sciences via scientific methods, while idealist social scientists stress out that not all methods can be applied to both natural and social sciences.
Besides, not every event causes the same output everywhere. Some intents, ideas and thoughts behind social behaviors cannot be observed according to Prof. Şentürk. Prof. Şentürk also stressed out that they do not adopt neither of those approaches since they are against reductionism, “Instead, we use a comparative and multiplex approach to analyze observable and unobservable dimensions of human demeanor.” He also emphasized that we should not be an agency for the Eurocentric, Western positivist theories and approaches. Prof. Recep Şentürk added “By saying, Social scientist and observer in the test tube,” social scientist believes that he is different from other scientists since the social scientist is inevitably in the test tube's condition, situation and position of social structure and culture. Prof. Recep Şentürk concluded his speech with an invitation to high school students who consider themselves as outstanding and distinguished in social sciences or longing to be as such in the future to visit Ibn Haldun University.
