Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Mon, 27 Jul 1992 17:25:28 -0400
Reply-To:     aa248@yfn.ysu.edu
              <QUALRS-L@UGA.BITNET>
From:         Nicholas Sturm <aa248@YFN.YSU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: What is critique?

>
...


>That goal is hardly unique, but seems to have been particularly
>successful for some applications over a period of...oh, a few years.
>
...
>
>In my mind, what distinguishes science from other ways of knowing
>is its intentionally systematic information gathering perspective.
>Others...who would never lay claim to being 'scientists'...also
>gather information, sometimes intentionally, sometimes systematically.
>It's when they do both, whether they care to be labeled 'scientists'
>or not, that they become such to me. Yes, that means I'm imposing
>a label on them and their activities. But that's a way of making
>sense of my experience of their experiences as they relate them
>to me. And I guess I don't feel guilty yet about trying to make
>sense of my world...which I do know I share with others.
>
>...my two cents.
>
>sharon bo.
>
>
I have been sitting out much of this qualitative/quantitative a-science
vs science discussion, but the points made here have brought me out of
the shadows (again).

I have the impression that most writing here have experienced only classroom
and demonstration laboratory in regard to the sciences.  Although today
there is much of scientific reportage that follows a cluster of scientific
methods, one can find many writing today that are largely descriptive and
that seems to be what I've continually hearing here as qualitative research
(let's sit down and watch for a while, talk with some naive reporters for a
while, and then tell people about what we have perceived) is very little
different from the descriptive science.  A chemist seldom repeats a new
synthesis (successfully) more than once.  The first reports of an astrono-
mers hypothesis (the theory comes much later, often) is seldom highly
experimental (if, in fact, ever).   A biological field study of 75 years ago
was almost always a field trip and a report, or field trips to ten, twenty ...
rarely a hundred DIFFERENT places and then a report.  Those still in contact
with life (!) still rely far less on experiment, data amassing and statistical
reduction than upon original observation and insight -- once the latter
have stimulated a hypothesis formal data collection and quantitative
methods may follow.

I think we may still be overlooking the fact that initial 'Aha!' usually
occurs early in the discovery/awareness process (while we are still viewing
the world as amateurs).  Only later when we wish to stimulate others to
'Of course!' do we resort to attempting the modern formal scientific methods.
(This is still all to evident to those seeking to develop grantsmanship.  No
(hardly any>?)  government body seems to recognize that the 'Aha!' stage is
what most needs to be supported (the qualitative stage of all
discovery/awareness); it's only after you have discovered enough to formulate
a hypothesis (that we are pretty well sure is true) that we can formalize the
method and expect a favorable response to the grant request.  Not yet so
obvious in the "descriptive sciences"--those that still recognize they have
much to learn by just observing--but most certainly all too evident to those
in fields that spend more time 'proving' because they already have discovered
so much (even if there is still more to perceived before it can be formally
subjected to those recognized methodologies).

To summarize (if possible), observation and description always come first,
hypotheses later, and perhaps a formal quantitative, probabilistic model
even later.  The stage that often advances toward more new knowledge is
the descriptive.  But once some formalism is developed the 'powers that
restrain' grow to demand more of the latter.




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