Discourses of Knowledge

Many statements in the Bahá'í writings are couched in the terms of a particular discourse or intellectual tradition of the text's immediate audience. These statements may assume some of the premises of the addressee, passing over them without necessarily seeking to challenge or affirm those premises in an absolute sense, in order to make an argument which the addressee can accept. Such premises may sometimes be factually true, in an empirical sense, while sometimes they may not be propositionally true, but may rather be true in a metaphoric and symbolic sense. Recovering the nature of the discourse being employed, or the intellectual context of the statement, can help one evaluate whether a given statement is meant to convey a propositional fact or a rhetorical truth. 'Abdu'l-Bahá often adopted the particular parameters of Western modernist discourse about knowledge, specifically in terms of the debate of science versus religion. His statements are, therefore, germane to the contemporary questions about academic or materialist methodologies and the Bahá'íview of these methodologies. 'Abdu'l-Bahá often appears to give precedence to logical proofs and scientific method over traditional religious modes or explanations of reality, particularly in questions of fact and information, though not necessarily where ethics and morality are concerned. He would therefore seem to assert the validity of Western academic methodologies.