Details of Methods

Descriptive Schema

Synonyms: Names often used to refer to the method, including a philosophical label developed by C. West Churchman in his analysis of inquiring systems (IS). In "The Design of Inquiring Systems" (1971), Churchman only identified five Inquiring Systems, and his ordering differs slightly from that generated using taxonomic principles. He used the Analytic-L2 method without identifying it, and missed the Contemplative-L'7 method.

Core Research Principle: Review the basic notion in the previous topic that introduced the methods.

Example: Examples are provided to help readers use something close to their own experience to check on the propositions offered.

Application: What the method looks like in use.

Growth of Knowledge: How knowledge is assumed to develop within the paradigm-method.

Representations and Reality: Truth is taken here to mean a correspondence between a representation and a reality. As explained, inquiry assumes reality exists, but the quality of reality as conceived within the method varies. In turn, that affects the nature of representations and any generalizations that are developed.

Implications: This highlights one or two aspects relevant to distinctiveness. Additional implications are developed in the later TET analysis.

Difficulty: Why the method is not as perfect as its proponents tend to claim.

Using the Method

Mentality: What sort of scholar or researcher is needed.

Indications: What sort of topic/puzzle is best addressed.

Contra-indications: What sorts of topics/puzzles are best avoided.

Dangers/Criticisms: Dangers intrinsic to a method are commonly the source of criticisms directed at it, often unfairly. The dangers are not necessarily applicable in any particular study.

Empirical Method-L'1

Synonyms: Inductive method, Survey method, Churchman's Lockeian IS.

Core Research Principle: Accumulate and organise facts.

Example: Survey research e.g. incidence of a disease in a community, number of a particular species in a forest at the end of each month.

Application: Empirical content that is pertinent to the question and actual situation.

Growth of Knowledge: Checking (i.e. verifying) observations or claims, and amassing and organising ever more facts.

Representations and Reality: Data-based facts capture the genuine reality, and induction from past fact-based regularities leads to laws that predict facts in new situations.

Implications: Ideas and reasoning are subjective and inherently doubtful or untrustworthy. Concepts should therefore correspond directly to observations i.e. the observation contains and exemplifies the concept.

Difficulty: Facts, presented as simple or obvious, get extremely complicated on close inspection.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer has a feel for and a belief in direct observation, and regards 'hard' data as the surest confirmation of certainty.

Indications: The method requires a well-structured question within a well-recognized field so that there is easy widely shared agreement on data validity and on the objectives of the study.

Contra-indications: An ill-structured problem made to look as if it is well-structured, as often applies in social science. In such situations, the necessary consensus on facts and goals are commonly lacking. The method is sometimes inapplicable because hard data is too costly, too difficult or impossible to obtain.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Proliferation of data without concern for explanations or causes.
Mining large data sets for correlations (that could be present by chance).
Denial of subjectivity or bias in data collection.
Excessive reliance on general agreement as proof of validity.
Loss or discounting of extreme outliers that represent valid phenomena.
Sampling errors and statistical torturing of data.
Dependence on hidden assumptions that are faulty.

Analytic Method-L'2

Synonyms: Dialogic method, Philosophical method.

Core Research Principle: Ratiocinate systematically.

All research methods use words and/or mathematical symbols linked into propositions and take their use for granted. This method regards this symbolic-linguistic structure as the focus for critical investigation.

Examples:

In most disciplines: Theoretical models that provide a framework for scientific thought, and therefore serve as a context for research e.g. via fact-collection (L'1) or hypothesis-testing (L'3).

In philosophy: Clarification of an idea like knowledge or consciousness or civilization; or development of an ontological framework to categorise existence; or answering an abstract question like "what is required of a citizen?".

Application: A conceptual analysis of aspects of the topic or situation wholly divorced from immediate choices. (So conclusions cannot be confirmed using concrete methods.)

Growth of Knowledge: Producing ever more sophisticated arguments and conclusions covering more and more adjacent topics.

Representations and Reality: Representations (conclusions) depend on a properly developed and carefully used framework of fundamental terms. This can only be provided by reasoned argument, using existing evidence and genuine dialogue.

Implications: Realities may either be taken for granted, or ignored as irrelevant, or get directly challenged.

Difficulty: Intense uncertainty because it is wholly based on the acceptability of assumptions and rules for the human mind. In philosophy, the question may be viewed as more important than the answer. In other disciplines, there is commonly either intense doubt or dogmatic belief.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer is capable of sustained abstract argumentation and theorizing using a multiplicity of concepts.

Indications: The method is suitable when there is evident confusion or difficulties in formulating research questions, or when clarification of concepts or a framework for inquiry is needed. It often gets applied to deal with tricky issues of self-description (identity).

Contra-indications: Used as a substitute for practical (i.e. scientific) inquiry at other levels.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Lack of a basic understanding of the topic in practical terms.
Degeneration into sterile wordplay.
Fostering of ideology, internecine strife, and extreme positions.

Explanatory Method-L'3

Synonyms: Representational method, Synthetic method, Hypothetico-deductive method, Churchman's Kantian IS.

Core Research Principle: Test hypotheses.

Examples: Randomized controlled trials of alternative treatment regimens. Devising and performing an experiment such that results can show that a pre-specified explanation is false.

Application: Selection of a better alternative to explain or predict the situation.

Growth of Knowledge: Progressively improving and testing ever more detailed alternative conjectures as to the working of the situation.

Representations and Reality: Representations (concepts, conjectures, explanations) and realities (observations, actuality, nature) are inseparable, each shaping and deriving from interactions with the other.

Implications: Observations are only indicators of concepts. Concepts can point to something in reality but cannot capture it. Multiple representations of the same reality are possible, and these need to be developed and compared to determine which is most likely to accord with reality.

Difficulty: So many possibilities exist to be examined that it is necessary to invoke principles which are external to the issue: like parsimony, aesthetics or simplicity.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer maintains a balanced and unbiased view.

Indications: The method suits complex and ill-structured problems where (a) an overall picture is available, and (b) a relevant part can be well-defined and specifically investigated in terms of given or agreed goals.

Contra-indications: No overall picture; confused objectives; biased investigators.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Proliferation of alternatives without respect for other criteria
Omission of important alternatives or inclusion of trivial alternatives.
Poorly chosen indicators and controls such that the hypothesis is not being convincingly tested.

Epistemology: The objective idealism of C.S. Pierce and transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant both assert that the reality of experiencing is based on some interaction between the objective or actual reality and the concepts and percepts within the mind of the observer. This interaction conditions research and knowledge.

Dialectic Method-L'4

Synonyms: Critical method, Conflictual method, Churchman's Hegelian IS.
Labeling: Dialectic is a term in philosophy with numerous references and covering a variety of doctrines including intimations of both this L'4-method and the analytic method-L'2. I have followed Churchman who saw 'making implicit contradictions explicit' as an approach associated with the philosophy of Hegel.

Core Research Principle: Address polarization.

Examples: Critical sociology e.g. analysis of a policy choice. Wave-particle duality in fundamental physics.

Application: Exposure of contradictions due to opposing beliefs or assumptions.

Growth of Knowledge: Using and establishing principles to develop ever more powerful syntheses that reveal ever more antinomies.

Representations and Reality: Complete representations must contain at least two directly opposite states (positions, perspectives), and agreed realities (facts, goals) can fit with either. However, there is a deeper (or higher) perspective or paradigm in which apparent differences are resolved, integrated or unified.

Implications: Representations are imbued with value and meaning, which affects agreement on what counts as reality. Absolute refutation of one pole is not possible because values cannot be refuted. However, social suppression may occur.

Difficulty: Awareness that an opposite view has validity is disturbing and may reinforce intolerance and suppression. Social polarisation may increase. Vacillation between alternatives may occur.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer is capable of intuitive appreciation and synthetic reasoning, and is therefore able to see the validity in opposite and competing viewpoints.

Indications: The method suits ill-structured topics whose true nature is in doubt, and where there is intense polarising debate (polemics) by experts. There is openness to affirmation of opposing values and goals in the inquiry.

Contra-indications: The issue is actually well-structured and not contentious, or it allows for an optimal solution if properly explained.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Proliferation of unnecessary conflict.
Loss of contact with specifics and practicalities.
Proposal of fudges and weak compromises rather than genuine syntheses.

Holistic Method-L'5

Synonyms: Developmental method, 'Soft Systems' method, Inter-disciplinary method, Churchman's Singerian IS.

Core Research Principle: Model a system completely.

Examples: Modeling the structure of an organization to facilitate change management.

Application: Formulation of a model to enable change in the system.

Growth of Knowledge: Developing ever more extensive and finely-tuned models covering systems either within or beyond the original system.

Representations and Reality: Representations are used to alter realities in line with purposes (values, objectives).

Implications: The model requires identification of key factors and forces that interact in relation to a given situation. The model is socio-physical and always reveals hierarchies and dualities.

Difficulty: Situations are ever-changing and all direct and indirect participants including the inquirer must be included.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer is capable of reflective awareness and synthetic reasoning, while desiring to be fully grounded in relation to relevant personal, social and practical factors.

Indications: The method suits situations that demand explicit structuring to aid interventions and development, typically in the presence of politics (i.e. social power used for personal agendas) and genuine uncertainty about objectives.

Contra-indications: Simple alternatives must be decided. Values of certainty or acceptability must be assigned over-riding importance.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Generation of unnecessary complexity or a destabilizing uncertainty.
Raising awareness of individuals to the violation of their values.
Lack of concern for reliability, validity, consistency, objectivity, power issues.

Ethics in Research: Knowledge has consequences, so emphasis on knowledge as 'what is?' is simply a convenient way of blocking out the every-present question and uncertainty of 'what ought to be?'. Rational ideas used here are a matter of defensible held values not value-free concepts.

Formal Method-L'6

Synonyms: Deductive method, Rationalist method, Analytic method, Churchman's Leibnizian IS.

Core Research Principle: Reason mathematico-logically.

Examples: Operations research e.g. optimizing networks, searches, queuing, routing, scheduling &c. Artificial intelligence e.g. robotics, algorithms, simulations. Statistical applications.

Application: Value-free analysis pertinent to the situation under investigation. Ideally, identify a few basic principles and model them mathematically.

Growth of Knowledge: Generating ever more elaborate and grounded analyses and models.

Representations and Reality: Assumptions and the end-points of strict ultra-rational or formal reasoning reveal and embody enduring self-evident properties of a class of situation. Those representations can reveal other features of that class, and aid prediction and control: i.e. the mathematical model will generate experimentally verifiable predictions.

Implications: Axioms and principles are simple, clear and unequivocal, while concrete realities are intrinsically complex and too difficult to capture and know. If the reality lies in the future, then the facts will be known too late.

Difficulty: Analyses and models, being artificial, may be inapplicable or unworkable, or even unexpectedly harmful in practice.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer understands the topic well, loves formal-mathematical reasoning, and appreciates how the particular question can be approached.

Indications: The method requires a well-defined and well-understood topic with a clear and agreed research goal.

Contra-indications: The topic is poorly understood in general or for the particular inquirer. Conflicts swirl around the topic or the goals of inquiry.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Proliferation of propositions without concern for data, implications or usefulness.
Analysis becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: true by definition and then imposed regardless of practical issues and consequences.
Analyses become over-extended or over-elaborate and too costly.

The primacy of ideas in this way has been proposed by many philosophers, notably by Leibniz, whose philosophy has been termed pluralistic idealism or panpsychism.

Contemplative Method-L'7

Synonyms: Imaginative method, Speculative method.

Core Research Principle: Speculate insightfully.

Example: Einstein used this method in developing his relativity theories, brilliantly imagining physical situations like riding a light-beam or being inside a falling lift. In later life, his biographer suggests, he became more focused on mathematics than on physical reality and less productive. Fundamental physics appears to be once again calling for use of this method. More: The current standard model of physics only explains ~5% of the matter and energy in the universe. Is that good enough? There is widespread dissatisfaction at the failure to integrate relativity and quantum theories despite many attempts. Quantum theory is viewed as incomplete. String theory is untestable and should not even count as a scientific theory (cf. dangers of the Formal Method).

Application: A conception of reality that completely grasps the puzzling situation and its resolution.

Growth of Knowledge: Creating ever more imaginative possibilities and making predictions that must be developed and checked using other research methods.

Representations and Reality: Realities can be represented by human beings if they fully identify with them through focused concentration and openness. The new representations, often counter-intuitive, emerge via the imagination. They are activated and developed via the use of images and symbols in illogical or alogical unconscious processes.

Implications: Representations stem from the search for Truth, an ultimate value immanent in the aspiration within inquiry.

Difficulty: Demands a great deal of faith and self-belief.

Using the Method

Mentality: The inquirer is capable of sustained concentrated contemplation and abandonment of previous personal convictions and support of the collegial consensus.

Indications: The method is suitable when the existing paradigm or theoretical model has too many unequivocal anomalies or too many philosophical objections.

Contra-indications: Much useful inquiry can be performed within the existing paradigm. The lack of any social recognition of the need for imaginative reformulation can be a severe practical impediment.

Dangers/Criticisms:

Development of quasi-delusional fixed ideas.
Degeneration into sterile word-play/formulae-play without testable insights.
Narcissistic motivations—desires for fame, glory, attention.

Dangers of terminology.
Explore the idealist-realist duality.
Compare all methods simultaneously via a TET.

Originally posted: 15-Apr-2015. Last amended 21-Feb-2022.