ppt on research

1. Philosophy
& Essence of
Research
Pratap Sharan
Professor, Department of Psychiatry,
AIIMS, New Delhi

3. Introduction
– Science works!
– Attested by the spectacular display of human technological prowess
– Yet, people speak of the crisis of science and even allude to the end of
science!

4. The Philosophy of Science
– The answer to the question “What can I know?” have been inconclusive
– Aristotle (384-322 BC) introduced ‘logic’ as a means of reasoning, but he stated
that knowledge is based on ‘intuition’
– Francis Bacon (1620) presented the reductionist approach, with focus on
inductive reasoning & stated that scientific knowledge should foster technology
(the modern scientific method)
– Robert Boyle (1682) was instrumental in establishing experiments as the
cornerstone of physical sciences

5. Logical Empiricism (logical positivism)
– John Locke; David Hume: all knowledge stems from experience
– Early 20th Century: science is based on experience (i.e., empiricism) and logic
(theory), where knowledge is intersubjectively testable (consensual,
reproducible)
– Important philosophers
– Betrand Russell (mathematical foundation)
– The Vienna Circle (1924 to 1936): Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Otto Neurath,
Karl Popper, Hilary Putnam, Willard Van Orman Quine, Hans Reichenbach,
Ludwig Wittgenstein

6. Logical Empiricism
– A scientific theory has thefollowing structure
– Observation → Empirical concepts →
Formal notions → Abstract laws
– The notion of unveiling laws of nature by
starting with individual observations is called
inductive reasoning
– Deductive reasoning starts with the abstract
laws and seeks knowledge by finding a
tangible factual description

7. Logical Empiricism
Challenges
– Some theoretical concepts are difficult to link to experiential notions
(like electrons, Higgs bosons, etc)?
– Inductive reasoning cannot lead to breakthroughs
– Black swan: no matter how often one observes white swans, one
cannot exclude the existence of a non-white one
– Generalizations (from the particular to the general) may not work

8. Critical Rationalism
– René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: knowledge can have aspects that
do not stem from experience, i.e., immanent reality to the mind
– Popper: Critical concept: the idea of falsifiability or fallibility
– Insights gained by pure thought should not be taken as truths - they should be
critically tested by experience - discarded if discrepancies are observed
– No number of experiments can ever be used to prove a theory, but a single
experiment suffices to contradict an established theory
– Deductive logic: currently (not falsified) theory → operationalization that can be
tested in nature → tested

9. Critical Rationalism
Challenges
– How can basic formal concepts be derived from experience without the help of
induction?
– Intuition (and deduction) can provide us with knowledge of truths such as
those found in mathematics and logic, but such knowledge is not substantive
knowledge of the external world
– What parts of a theory need to be discarded once it is falsified?

10. The Kuhnian View
Thomas Kuhn (1962): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Phases in the evolution of science
1. Prehistory: many schools of thought co-exist and controversies are abundant
2. History proper: one group of scientists establishes a new solution to an existing
problem which opens the doors to further inquiry and a paradigm emerges
3. Paradigm based science: unity in the scientific community on what the
fundamental questions and central methods should be (puzzle solving process)
4. Crisis: more and more anomalies and boundaries start to appear, questioning
and challenging the established rules
5. Revolution: a new theory and Weltbild (concept of the world) takes over solving
the anomalies and a new paradigm is born

11. The Kuhnian View
The Copernican revolution: movements of planets and stars
– Ancient humans: many explanatory myths
– Claudius Ptolemy (100 AD): Geocentric model
– Accurate predictions about celestial mechanics
– New observational data – the model became unworkable
– Nicolaus Copernicus (1543): Heliocentric model
– Verification of novel predictions established the new paradigm
Incommensurability (Kuhn; Paul Feyerabend)
– Every rule is part of a paradigm; and there exist no trans-paradigmatic rules

12. The Kuhnian View
1. Every human observation of reality contains an a priori theoretical framework
– Two scientists looking at the same aspect of reality do not necessarily see the
same things
2. Data do not determine theories
– Any theory can be made compatible with recalcitrant observations by adaptions made to
the background assumptions
3. Every experiment is based on auxiliary hypotheses
– initial conditions, the functioning of the apparatus, the experimental setup, the
selected modes for interpreting the experimental data

13. Postmodernism
– Modernism (starting early 19th Century): objective true beliefs exist,
progression is linear (steadily improving the status quo)
– Postmodernism (starting 1970s): many different opinions and forms can coexist
(diversity, intermingling)

14. Postmodernism
Tarnas (1991)
– The postmodern mind may be viewed as open-ended, indeterminate set of
attitudes that has been shaped by a great diversity of intellectual and cultural
currents. There is an appreciation of the plasticity and constant change of reality
and knowledge, a stress on the priority of concrete experience over fixed abstract
principles, and a conviction that no single a priori thought system should govern
belief or investigation. It is recognized that human knowledge is subjectively
determined by a multitude of factors; that objective essences, or things-in-
themselves, are neither accessible nor possible; and that the value of all truths and
assumptions must be continually subjected to direct testing. The critical search for
truth is constrained to be tolerant of ambiguity and pluralism, and its outcome will
necessarily be knowledge that is relative and fallible rather than absolute or certain.

15. 10 Things I Know to be True
1. Affirmation: same or very similar things
2. Dissonance: opposite to something you know is true
3. Novel thoughts: something you have never even heard of before
4. Limited scope: something you know about, but they are
introducing a new angle to it or are extending its scope

16. Constructivism
– Kuhn’s analysis challenges the objective and universal nature of scientific
knowledge
– Scientific knowledge is constructed by the current scientific community, seeking
to understand and build models of the world
– Radical constructivism (Von Glasersfeld, 1984): abandons objectivity
– Objectivity is the illusion that observations are made without an observer
– Neuroscience: perception never yields a faithful image of outer reality but is
always an inner construction, derived from sensory input but dependent on
the cognitive apparatus of each individual (neuroscience): reality is not
passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it

17. Relativism
– Undermines the notion relating to absolute meaning, truth or belief
– If knowledge is constructed and hence contingent, then it can be
rational for a group A to believe a fact P, while at the same time it is
rational for group B to believe in negation of P
– Feyerabend: Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world
– Jainism: the universe can be looked at from many points of view, and
that each viewpoint yields a different conclusion - therefore, no
conclusion is decisive

18. The Evolution of Science
– Despite the remarkable success of science in continually uncovering knowledge
of the world, our idea of reality itself emerged as conceptually flawed
– Fundamental physics
– Discrete nature of reality (quantum phenomena)
– Malleability of space and time (special and general relativity)
[…] the concepts derived from the new physics presented seemingly insuperable
obstacles to the human intuition generally: a curved space, finite yet unbounded; a
four-dimensional space-time continuum; mutually exclusive properties possessed by
the same subatomic entity; objects that were not really things at all but processes or
patterns of relationships; phenomena that took no decisive shape until observed;
particles that seemed to affect each other at a distance with no known causal link; the
existence of fundamental fluctuations of energy in a total vacuum.

19. The End of Science?
– The end of science - everything there is to know became known
– Stephen Hawking (1980): “Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?
– I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the
not too far future…. we might have a complete, consistent and unified theory of the
physical interactions which would describe all possible observations
– Horgan (1997): science is losing its momentum to uncover knowledge
– Our descendants will learn much more about nature, and they will invent gadgets even
cooler than smart phones. But their scientific version of reality will resemble ours, for two
reasons: First, ours […] is in many respects true; most new knowledge will merely extend
and fill in our current maps of reality rather than forcing radical revisions. Second, some
major remaining mysteries - Where did the universe come from? How did life begin? How,
exactly, does a chunk of meat make a mind? - might be unsolvable.

20. The Fractal Nature of
Knowledge
– Breakthrough have become exceedingly rare
– Knowledge seems to posses a fractal-like nature
– The closer one examines a phenomenon, the more perplexing
it becomes as every explanation seems to open the door to
countless new puzzles:
– At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer

21. Research philosophy
– Research: creative work inquired or undertaken on a systematic basis in order
to increase the knowledge of man, culture and society, and to use this stock of
knowledge to devise new applications
– Research philosophy denotes the school of thought that underpins the
development of knowledge and the nature of that knowledge in relation to
research
– 4 philosophical realms involved in research
– ontology, epistemology, axiology & logic of inquiry

22. Philosophical realms
involved in research
– Ontology is the study of the nature of reality,
being or existence
– Epistemology is concerned with the knowledge
of reality (i.e., the constituents, structure,
sources and limits of that knowledge) and
justified beliefs
– Axiology looks into personal values (namely,
ethics and aesthetics) and their association with
knowledge
– Logic of inquiry reveals the research reasoning,
i.e., deduction or induction

23. Research paradigm
– A research paradigm is defined as ‘a philosophical framework or set of beliefs
that guides action on research’
4 paradigms
– Positivism
– Post-positivism/ realism
– Interpretivism/ constructivism
– Pragmatism

24. Positivism
Positivism (or empiricism, reductionism, hypothetico-deductive)
– There is an objective reality (or truth) with specific patterns, which can be
predicted or explained through theories or laws
– The objective results are generalizable
– Knowledge is value-free and independent of researchers’ influence
– Conduct theory-based research using deductive reasoning as the scientific
method (theory  hypothesis  data) to confirm a generalization
– With limited use of inductive reasoning (data  theory)

25. Post-positivism
Post-positivism (or realism, critical realism, post-empiricism)
– Accepts an ‘imperfect reality’ and recognizes the inherent biases arising from
social interactions or the research process
– Research is partly value-laden (researchers’ values influence research) but
relevant biases are controlled
– They also utilize scientific methods mainly using deductive reasoning

26. Interpretivism
Interpretivism (or constructivism, phenomenology, relativism, hermeneutics)
– Many subjective realities that can be constructed by individual interpretations
– Try to find ‘meanings’ or constructed knowledge through qualitative data rather
than objective facts
– Research is value-bound; & researcher is a participant-observer (directly
involved in the study with his own interpretations)
– Mostly acquire knowledge through inductive reasoning (data  pattern 
theory), with limited use of theory-based deductive reasoning
– Generalization is obtained through theory creation rather than hypothesis
testing

27. Pragmatism
Pragmatism
– Accepts multiple realities and aims at providing pragmatic solutions
– “Truth is what is really useful”
– Accepts linkage between facts and values
– Conduct research with several quantitative or qualitative methods
– Both inductive and deductive approaches are employed to obtain practical
knowledge

28. Conclusions
– An understanding of philosophy enables researchers to think
about the reasons why and what to research, select the most
appropriate methodology for the study and detailed methods

30. Thank you