dear ken,



i don't know why you are so insistent that morphologically, "research" does not consist of the prefix "re" and the word stem "search." you said that the use of the english "research" comes from the french "recherche," which my dictionary breaks down into the very same two components "re-cherche," searching repeatedly.



true, the interpretation of the compound "research" connotes carefulness, thoroughness, proceeding methodically, being systematic, or leaving nothing out. however, accomplishing this always means attending to data repeatedly until one is sure one has understood them all, or found a satisfactory answer to one's research question.



recognizing research as re-search has the advantage of focusing the reader on what researchers actually do.  the words "inquiry" and "investigation" are less descriptive of the process of handling facts -- but all of them require looking into some kind of available data or recorded observations.



i do not want to continue struggling with you on this issue. neither of us were there when the word "research" was first used in english, and what their first users had in mind. i am more interested in understanding what is done when engaging in research. i suggest that all scientific research provides explanations, theories or predictions that are based on evidence in the form of data and their systematic analysis.  when scientific researchers apply for grants, they need to be explicit about at least 5 components: 



(1)  an interesting research question that is presumed to be answerable with the help of not yet available data, for example, whether a medication has the alleged side effects, how old an excavated set of bones are, which of say 3 human-computer interfaces are better (by specified criteria), whether a theory or hypothesis is valid 



(2)  a review of available literature on how the research question has been handled by other researcher and what the proposed research would add to that literature



(3)  the proposed method of generating pertinent data, be it by controlled experiments, opinion surveys, literature searches -- addressing problems of sample sizes, reliability, observer biases



(4)  the proposed methods of analyzing the data, for example, by variance analysis, factor analysis, comparative measurements, ...



(5)  criteria to be employed for taking the findings as an acceptable answer to the research question: statistical significance of the findings, the validity of the answers offered 



These 5 components are common, if you examine published research results, you find them addressed.  they all require careful generation and analysis of data, systematic going through facts, measuring and correlating the objects made available for the study. (to me that careful handling of data is well captured by the interpretation of "re-search" but you don't agree with me and i don't think agreement is necessary to understand what scientific research entails).



clearly, what i have described as scientific research aims at explanations, not innovation, at describing what is, not what could be. it is based on data that a researcher needs to generate, find, or be given.  data are not about the future that designers are interested in but about what has happened.  this is not to say that researchers look only backward.  they generalize what was found in the data. but generalizing what happened in the past renders designers the servants of what happened in the past, unable to do their job of intervening in undesirable conditions to generate new and better measures. 



design research -- however that will come to be defined -- to be useful to designers will have to develop its own vocabulary -- search for and evaluate solutions, work with stakeholder's conceptions, find compelling arguments for the possibilities of futures that do not yet exist. i do not see much consensus on that yet.  we cannot adopt this vocabulary from the natural sciences as this would stifle designers' ability to go beyond what exists in data, and what powerful institutions do not wish to change, this curbing the designers creativity.



klaus       



-----Original Message-----

From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman

Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 9:01 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: The word "research"



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—