What is Scientific Reality?

https://doi.org/10.21111/jocrise.v4i1.96

Authors

  • Mohammad Shahadat Hossain

Abstract

Scientific progress in AI, Big Data, and FINTECH has revolutionized human life but also intensified inequality, surveillance, and ecological crises. This paper argues that such contradictions arise from modern science’s separation of morality from materiality. It advances the Law of Unity of Knowledge, integrating ethical consciousness (“being”) with empirical reality (“becoming”) through circular causation. The framework, rooted in insights from Einstein, Hawking, Whitehead, and Imam Ghazali, culminates in a Wellbeing Function that links sustainability to moral-material complementarity. Applications include ethical AI in healthcare and Qur’ānic principles of trusteeship in agriculture, redefining scientific reality as holistic, ethical, and transformative

References

Arner, D.W. Barberis, J. and Buckley, R.P. (2016). “The Evolution of Fintech: A New Post-Crisis Paradigm?” Georgetown Journal of International Law, vol. 47, pp. 1271–1319.

Bender, E.M., Gebru, T. McMillan-Major, A. and Shmitchell, S. (n.d.) “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” in Proc. ACM Conf. Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.

Bohr, N. (1985), “Discussions with Einstein on epistemological issues”, in H. Folse, The Philosophy of Niels Bohr: The Framework of Complementarity, North Holland Physics Publishing, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Carnap, R. (1966). “Kant’s synthetic a priori”, in his Philosophical Foundations of Physics, Ed. M. Gardner, Basic Books, Inc. New York, NY.

Choudhury, M.A. (2023). “Circular Causation”. World Journal of Social Science Studies, 10:3

Choudhury, M.A. & Hossain, M.S. (2010). "Neuro-Cybernetics of Socio-Scientific Systems", Mind and Society, Springer-Nature, 9:2.

Einstein, A. (1960). Relativity, The Special and the General Theory. Methuen, London, Eng.

Ghazzali A.H. [Imam] trans. Marmura, M.E. (1997). The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Brigham Young University Press, Provo, Utah. Also see, Ghazali A.H. [Imam] trans. Buchman (1998). The Niche of Lights, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

Gomber, P. J.-A. Koch, J. -A and Siering,M. (2017). “Digital Finance and FinTech: Current Research and Future Research Directions,” Journal of Business Economics, vol. 87, no. 5, pp. 537–580, doi: 10.1007/s11573-017-0852-x.

Hawking, S.W. (1980). "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?" Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Eng.

Hawking, S.W. (1988). A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Works, Inc. New York, NY.

JOCRISE (Journal of Critical Realism in Socio-Economics, 2:4 July 2024). Beyond, 2:4,

Manyika, J. Chui, M. Brown, B. et al., (May 2011). “Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity,” McKinsey Global Institute Report.

Mayer-Schönberger, V. and Cukier, K. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Penrose, R. (1989). The Emperor’s New Mind, Oxford University Press, UK.

Philippon, T. (2016). “The FinTech Opportunity,” NBER Working Paper No. 22476, doi: 10.3386/w22476.

Sagan, C. (2025). Carl Sagan - Wikipedia

Silver, D. Schrittwieser, J. Simonyan, K. et al. (2017). “Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge,” Nature, vol. 550, no. 7676, pp. 354–359, doi: 10.1038/nature24270.

Wikipedia. “Dirac Equation”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs.

Published

31-10-2025

How to Cite

Hossain, M. S. . (2025). What is Scientific Reality?. Journal of Critical Realism in Socio-Economics (JOCRISE), 4(1). https://doi.org/10.21111/jocrise.v4i1.96