Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your note, pasted below. This post involves three issues to
which I should respond. The first is relatively easy – it involves the
meaning of the word “research” and the nature of the prefix
“re.”

There seems to be a category confusion here on issues in etymology and
meaning. 

Two kinds of words use the prefix “re.”

One kind of word employs the contemporary meaning of the prefix
“re.” These tend to be relatively recent English words created
from English usage. This includes cases in which some parts of the word
may go back to loan words or imported words. Merriam-Webster’s (1993:
971-972) offers an extensive list of those words. 

The word “research” is not such a word.

The other kind of word is a loan word or import word from another
language. In this kind of word, parts of the word take on sense and
meaning borrowed from the lending language. 

The word “research” is this kind of word, and this is the case of
the prefix “re” in the loan word “research.” 

The word “research” was imported from Middle French. It entered the
English language in the 1500s. In the word “research,” the prefix
“re” brought with it a different meaning to the English meaning
of the prefix “re” several centuries later. Despite the fact that
the original word and prefix were French, the word and meaning of
“research” as I use them are English and have been for centuries.
You can see them in the definitions, exemplars, and etymological notes
that I posted yesterday. These are not from French dictionaries – they
are from English dictionaries, and they explain both historical and
current usage.

Your post refers to the current English meanings of the prefix “re”
in Webster’s dictionary (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 971). These
meanings are: “again,” “anew,” “back,” and “backward.” 

This is irrelevant to the word “research.” The issues I raise have
to do with etymology, lexicography, usage, and meaning. Morphology is
also irrelevant. 

Morphology examines the physical form of the word, and breaking the
word “research” into two syllables is as inappropriate in determine
what the word means as breaking it into eight letters.

The problem in using morphology is the use of physical formalism.
Physical formalism fails to address the differences in etymology and
history that affect the meaning of this word. This is the task of
etymology and lexicography based on usage exemplars from the living
language.

The entry in Webster’s to which you refer provides an extensive list
of words that use the prefix “re” in the sense that you describe
(Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 971-972). 

The word “research” does not appear on the list of words that use
the prefix “re” in these senses.

Neither in English nor French does the prefix “re” in the word
“research” mean “again,” “anew,” “back,” or
“backward.”

In attempting to describe the meaning of the word “research” based
on what you are labeling morphology, you are confusing different senses
of the same prefix. There are indeed many words in which “re” is not
a stem, just as there are many words in which the prefix “re” means
“again,” “anew,” “back,” and “backward.” None of these
conditions apply to the word “research.”

The word “research” simply doesn’t mean “searching again,
repeating a search.” At least it does not to the lexicographers and
scholars whose work became the basis for the dictionary entries I
posted. Those etymological derivations, dictionary entries, and
exemplars offered in my post state what the word means to the broad
consensus of scholars. Given the definitions, I don’t see how this
confirms your interpretation.

Merriam-Webster’s (1993: 995) – the same source in which you
located the definition of the prefix “re” – defines research as a
noun and as a verb. As a noun, it means “1: careful or diligent search
2: studious inquiry or examination; especially : investigation or
experimentation aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts,
revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of new facts, or
practical application of such new or revised theories or laws 3: the
collecting of information about a particular subject.” As a verb, it
means: “1: to search or investigate exhaustively 2: to do research for
… intransitive senses: to engage in research.”

That’s the first point. You raise two additional issues that will
take some time and thinking. The second of these involves reflection on
different aspects of the word “research.” You’ve got some ideas
here that deserve reflection. 

While the morphological explanation of the word “research” is
incorrect, the issues and nuances you bring to a description of the
research process demand careful consideration and reflection.

The third issue will take me some time. You’ve challenged me to spell
out what I mean by the term “design research.” I’m leaving next
week for Helsinki, Copenhagen, and a stop in Hong Kong on my way back,
so I can’t promise this before late September. While I can write up my
notes and thoughts, it will take time to put my thoughts into shape. It
will be a long post when I put it forward.

Your job at a major US research university is not all that different to
my role at a major Australian research university. At least we are a
major research university if you believe such measures as the Shanghai
Jiao Tong index of the world’s 500 leading research universities. On
that basis, I can also argue that I know what I’m talking about. 

Whatever the respective merits of our knowledge, Webster’s is a valid
source. The list of words (Merriam-Webster’s 1993: 971-972) that use
the prefix “re” to mean “again,” “anew,” “back,” and
“backward” does not include the word “research.”

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean, Faculty of Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

email: [log in to unmask]
URL: www.swinburne.edu.au/design

Reference

Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1993. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.
Tenth edition. Springfield, Massachusetts.

--

Klaus Krippendorff wrote: 

—snip—

your compilations of the etymology of “research” is helpful and
confirms my interpretation in english and french.

one has to distinguish the morphology of the word and its
interpretation.

regarding the morphology, re-search (english), re-cherche (french),
re-cherchieren (german), webster defines the prefix “re-” 1. again,
anew as in retell and 2. back as in recall. another defines “re-” as
“to double” or “to repeat”.

not in all words starting with “re” can one distinguish a prefix
and a word stem, for example “reach”, “reality”, “reading”,
“red”.

so morphologically, research is searching again, repeating a search.

for something to be searched again, it needs to stay put, unchanging.
the sound of a spoken word disappears after it is uttered -- unless it
has been recorded, has become a datum. in the sciences we collect data,
recordings, transcripts, lists of measurements, precisely because one
could not re-search them otherwise, but data are always generated in the
past. one cannot have data about the future. moreover, one cannot have
findings unless the findings were there before one searched for them. 

why would one want to search again? of course one wants to be sure,
demonstrate to fellow researchers what one has done with the data and
how one came to ones findings. your dictionary interpretations attest to
research being thorough, systematic, carefully done, which can be
accomplished mainly because one looks at the data again and again to be
sure nothing is overlooked. the interpretations you cite are fully
consistent with re-search as a repeated search among data -- whatever
they consist of.

unlike what you allege, i never said that re-search is looking back
into the past, only that it proceeds on what has survived from the past
into the present.

scientific predictions, i.e., data based predictions are
generalizations from available data to data not yet available. the
latter do not need to concern future phenomena, only to phenomena one
does not have evidence for. for example schliemann predicted the
location of troy from available records and indeed found its ruins. 

people predict all kinds of things: doomsdays, the return of prophets,
or economic downturns. however, scientific predictions, predictions
based on research are always extrapolations of patterns, trends,
stabilities that are manifest in data from the past. scientific
predictions concerning future events are always extrapolations of past
stabilities (ergodicities if you like the technical term).

to me all design encourages human actions that change something which
could not have come about without purposive human actions. Hence
“design research” is an oxymoron in the sense that “research”
reveals what persists, while “design” seeks to intervenes what would
otherwise persist. it alters the researchable past in unpredictable yet
desirable ways.

in “the semantic turn” and my oxymoron paper i pointed out the
epistemological problem that all designers face, which is convincing
stakeholders that their proposals have the potential of being realizable
and desirable without being predictable from available data and i
developed several ways one can develop empirical support for the claims
that designers need to make.

i challenge ken to spell out what he means by “design research”
(incidentally, i am teaching at a major u.s. research university and i
think i know what i am talking about), 

—snip—