Inquiry Into Inquiry

There is a particular type of “justification trap” a person can fall into, of trying to prove the scientific method by solely deductive means, that is, of trying to show the scientific method is a good method by starting from the simplest possible axioms, principles everyone would accept, about what is good.

Often this happens, in spite of the fact one really knows better, simply in the process of arranging one’s thoughts in a rational order, say, from the most elementary and independent to the most complex and derivative, as if for the sake of a logical and summary exposition.  But when does that rearrangement cease to be a rational reconstruction and start to become a destructive rationalization, a distortion of the genuine article, and a falsification of the authentic inquiry it attempts to recount?

Sometimes people express their recognition of this trap and their appreciation of the factor it takes to escape it by saying there is really no such thing as the scientific method, that the very term “scientific method” is a misnomer and does not refer to any kind of method at all, in short, the development of knowledge cannot be reduced to any fixed method because it involves in an essential way such a large component of non-methodical activities.  If one’s idea of what counts as method is fixed on the ideal of a deductive procedure then it’s no surprise one draws that conclusion.

cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Ontolog
cc: FB | Inquiry Driven Systems • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

Inquiry begins in doubt, a debit of certainty and a drought of information, never a pleasant condition to acknowledge, and one of the primary obstacles to inquiry may be reckoned as owing to the onus one naturally feels on owning up to that debt.  Human nature far prefers to revel in the positive features of whatever scientific knowledge it already possesses and the mind defers as long as possible the revolt it feels arising on facing the uncertainties that still persist, the “nots” and “not yets” it cannot as yet and ought not deny.

Reference

• The I Ching, or Book of Changes, R. Wilhelm and C.F. Baynes (trans.), Foreword by C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series 19, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.  1st edition 1950, 2nd edition 1961, 3rd edition 1967.

cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Ontolog
cc: FB | Inquiry Driven Systems • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

The discussion in this Chapter addresses a set of conceptual and methodological obstacles standing in the way of the current inquiry, threatening to undermine a reasonable level of confidence in the viability of its proceeding, all of which problems I think can be overcome.

Often the biggest obstacle to learning more is the need to feel one already knows.  And yet there are some things a person knows, at least, in comparison to other things, and it makes sense to use what one already knows best in order to learn what one needs to know better.  The question is, how does one know which is which?  What test can tell what is known so well it can be trusted in learning what is not?

One way to test a supposed knowledge is to try to formulate it in such a way that it can be taught to other people.  A related test, harder in some ways but easier in others, is to try to formalize it so completely that even a computer could go through the motions that are supposed to be definitive of its practice.

Both ways of testing a supposition of knowledge depend on putting knowledge in forms which can be communicated or transported from one medium or system of interpretation to another. Knowledge already in a concrete form takes no more than a simple reformation or transformation, otherwise it takes a more radical metamorphosis, from a wholly disorganized condition to the first inklings of a portable or sharable form.

cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Ontolog
cc: FB | Inquiry Driven Systems • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
— W.B. Yeats

I have in mind circling back to a point in my project on Inquiry Driven Systems, namely, the chapter addressing various Obstacles to the Project.

cc: Conceptual Graphs • Cybernetics • Laws of Form • Ma^thstodon • Ontolog
cc: FB | Inquiry Driven Systems • Structural Modeling • Systems Science