Dear Terry,
You asked: 'Some research ...is conducted largely as a process of
writing.'
Please could you say more.
Sorry I have been too busy to attend to this quickly enough. Others have
stepped in quite effectively - Keith, Tiiu, Fil and Teena. What is
externalized can be attended to critically, not only by the author but
by others - that is an important point. Also, words can be the object of
the research - as in some forms of literary and philosophical enquiry -
and therefore require writing as a research process.
Clearly research is not one type of activity. Whatever commonalities
there may be between one research process and another, the practice of
researching is always a carefully designed sequence of activities that
end up being conducted in a messier way than one would have liked.
Making models, measuring things, observing behaviour, and many other
types of activity occur in some research but not all. All I am
suggesting is that in some research, for good practical reasons, a
process of writing is the dominant activity - Keith put it well in
contrasting 'reading' with 'writing' the latter signifies an 'active
researching of a field'.
One could stretch the point, to make a link back to design, a parallel
contrast might be made between observational drawing and design drawing.
Unfortunately, I am out of time ... May be I will be able to expand on
this thought next week.
Regards
Geoff
(Lincoln)
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