Data: Level-1 in Inquiry

Formulation

Data is proposed as the basis and means for all inquiry. It derives from the use of sensation, which is L1 in experience-PH4. Experience just requires sensing to be enabled or given attention. Data requires more: sensations must be captured and collected.

PH2: INQUIRY
Primary Hierarchy
L7: ?
L6: ?
L5: ?
L4: ?
L3: ?
L2: ?
L1: Collect Data

Collected Data has to be preserved so that it is useable subsequently for or social sharing and checking. Personal recall is too unreliable for a rigorous scientific study.

Function: To capture sense-data in a way that permits its later processing for knowledge.

Data can be obtained by indicating or pointing to a phenomenon, and without knowing what is being observed i.e. without relevant concepts-L2 beyond those specifying the sensations—which is to be expected at the leading edge of discovery.
Example:Closed A more powerful telescope may get signals never before received and not fitting with any existing astronomical theory.

Cumulation: Everything in inquiry cumulates on the phenomenon that is captured and collected as data.

Features

Uncertainty Puzzle:  Is that it?
There are ways to reduce uncertainty about the presence of a phenomenon: 
e.g. by using multiple independent observers, replicating the process, ensuring data collectors are blind to suggestive contextual factors.

Inherent Error:  Misperception.
We are easily led astray by illusions, distraction, and in-built judgement biases like anchoring, expectations &c. Equipment is just as vulnerable: e.g. to electromagnetic fields, component dysfunction, misalignment, temperature fluctuations &c.

Use of Numbers: Counting.
A datum (data point) is either registered or it is not registered. The number of times the same datum appears in a collection can be counted. More sophisticated treatment of data (e.g. ordering) depends on higher level inquiry entities.

Locus of Control: Internal-personal-subjective
Data, even if collected by instruments and seemingly objective, remains under personal control and is therefore a private or subjective matter for the investigator. Being subjective, data requires controls to avoid possibilities of bias or fraudulent misrepresentation.

While it is possible to make public what was previously hidden or unnoticed, that is not necessarily automatic or easy. So it cannot be taken for granted. Social resistance to collected data may be based on bias, self-interest, and ideological or conceptual disagreement.

Relation to Other Domains

Action-RL1 is the primary requirement for data i.e. it must be collected. To collect data, you may need to position yourself, set up a situation, tick a box, take a photograph, read a digital counter, write down a description &c.

It is possible to happen upon a phenomenon, but that should generate doubt and so calls for active data collection within a dedicated inquiry process.

Determining and collecting data typically involves distinguishing or discriminating and identifying or recognizing—which links it to representing (L6 in change-PH3) with its nested modeling methods (PH'3). As might be expected, these have a profound impact on the generation of knowledge.

The phenomenon generating data is not merely a stimulus (L1 in communication-PH5), but is regarded as a signal-L2 i.e. data has unequivocal content even if the meaning is obscure.

In all THEE Primary Hierarchies: At L1, the form taken by the entity is the most simple and the most concrete that can be judged to be an example of the psychosocial phenomenon. However, it is evidently the infrastructure or means, rather than the phenomenon itself—which in this case is: Inquiry.

From an  Inquiry perspective, collecting data fits all requirements:

  • determined by a person
    i.e. fits the psychological criterion;
  • used in social life
    i.e. fits the social criterion;
  • depends on biology
    i.e. fits the human criterion;
  • the simplest deliberate form of inquiry
    i.e. fits Level-1 criterion. 

As we will see, data are:

  • intrinsic to all the more complex, higher-level forms of inquiry
    i.e. fits the hierarchy criterion.
  • Free-floating or raw data are meaningless. They must somehow be categorized and generalized, which forces a move up to the next level: concepts-L2.

Originally posted: 23-Aug-2015.