Hi Teena,
Thanks for your message.
working across different fields, I haven't found really that much
difference in methods, methodology and epistemology between the natural
sciences and the social sciences (or the fields of Business, ICT,
Engineering/Technology, Design and most of the Humanities).
In all cases in research the main aim seems to be to get to some kind of
reliable defined representation of reality that can later be used by others.
Mostly that requires identifying those representations of relaity by using
tools that help avoid problems associated with erroneous subjective
judgements and opinions, rhetoric, fallacies and errors of reasoning.
Everything else is detail? There's a quote below about social science
methodology that would appear to apply in general to many other fields -
including the natural sciences?
Cheers,
Terry
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There are no laws in social science that parallel the laws in the natural
science. A law in social science is a universal generalization about a
class of facts. A fact is an observed phenomenon, and observation means it
has been seen, heard or otherwise experienced by researcher. A theory is a
systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular
aspect of social life. Concepts are the basic building blocks of theory and
are abstract elements representing classes of phenomena. Axioms or
postulates are basic assertions assumed to be true. Propositions are
conclusions drawn about the relationships among concepts, based on analysis
of axioms. Hypotheses are specified expectations about empirical reality
which are derived from propositions. Social research involves testing these
hypotheses to see if they are true.
-----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 teena
clerke
Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 12:33 PM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: Research through design - methodological issues
Hi Terry,
what I meant is that from a social science epistemological position, rather
than a natural sciences-based epistemology, methodology is not seen as a
rigid recipe.
teena
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