Dear Tim,
I'm pleased to have been of help.
I should have expanded on the abductive logic stuff - when one sets out
to analyse and criticise a literary work, the usual way (following the
methods of New Criticism) is to apply an abductive logic. That is, you
read the text once, come up with a few ideas about what is going one,
then you analyse these ideas in a critical way and attempt to apply
aspects of existing theories, then you read the book again from the
perspective of your first analysis, then you come up with some new ideas
that modify your first set of ideas etc. etc. This is an abductive
process . You keep doing this until you have exhausted the new data that
comes from a new reading and then you write it up.
The key point here in talking about New Criticism is that New Criticism
took the view that there was a TEXT such that it could be analysed as a
THING independently of its author and/or the reader's presumptions about
authorial intentionality. While post-modernist and post-structuralist
approaches to literature would seem to get cranky with the idea of a
TEXT, they nonetheless use the methods of New Criticism to approach the
"contested text". Reception Aesthetics may shift the location of the
TEXT from a static object to a dynamically received object (before
consciousness) but Reception Aesthetics also proceeds on the basis of
the objectivity of a TEXT.
So Grounded Theory, from my perspective, is also proceeding as if there
is a TEXT. Determining the TEXT is the job of the researcher. This would
seem a useful approach to some aspects of design research.
It should be pointed out that "reading", as a process, has been seen
this way (data/analysis/critique/theory) in academia for a long time.
One would go to Oxford to "read" the classics - one didn't need to go to
Oxford to "read" English texts because these were already openly
available to a trained mind because the authors of English texts were
themselves trained minds.
cheers
keith
>>> Tim Smithers <[log in to unmask]> 20/12/2012 10:50 pm >>>
Dear Keith,
I very much like your post!
Your notion of the cognitive power of a theory to transform
our understanding fits well with the puzzlement removing [1]
and demystifying [2] qualities that I look for in a theory of
designing, and by which it may be judged. Your example of how
a theory transformed your understanding of Faulkner's "The
Sound and the Fury" is excellent. I only remember this as a
"dark and difficult" novel, but your theory makes me want to
read it again. This is what a useful theory can do: make you
want to look again at something, and think differently about
it. It's one of the ways we place, piece by piece,
understanding beneath our research feet, I think.
So, I strongly agree with you, the show aspect of a theory is
important. It's the aspect that actually gets used. It's
therefore the aspect we should judge a theory by. If we
carefully compare our new way of seeing against some suitable
part of the real world, we can test our theory, both what it
shows us, and, by implication, it's internal coherence and
robustness.
Also, describing Grounded Theory as functioning like literary
criticism has quite transformed my understanding of how
Grounded Theory is supposed to work. I've been somewhat
mystified by this for a long time. And the Grounded Theory
practitioners I've asked for help on this haven't managed to
clarify things much. So, thank you for this too!
Following your post, there's more I'd like to say on use and
testing of theories of designing. But I'll put this in a
separate post.
Best regards,
Tim
References
[1] Wilkes, K: 1989. Explanation -- how not to miss the
point, in Montefiore, A and Noble, D (eds), Goals, No
Goals, and Own Goals, Unwin Hyman, London, pp 194*210.
[2] Boden, M A: 1962. The paradox of explanation, Proc
Aristotelian Soc, ns, pp 159-178. Reprinted in Boden M A,
1981, Minds and Mechanisms, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University
Press.
================================================
On Dec 19, 2012, at 23:16 , Keith Russell wrote:
> Dear Time,
>
> yes, I agree about the practical usefulness notion of testing theory.
>
> In the case of my own theories, I also see, as part of the practical
use, the cognitive power or authority of a theory. That is, a theory, in
the humanities, must, as part of its practical application, be able to
transform our understanding as in "now I understand".
>
> So, if I were to say, for example, that after struggling for many
years with William Faulkner's novel, The Sound and The Fury I came up
with a theoretical insight such that the novel, in my theory, can be
viewed as the account of an Oikois mind - the mind of the family, such
that each voice is part of a family voice, much as is the case in Greek
Tragedy. Which, when you boil it down, is a claim that the novel is best
viewed as a Greek Tragedy even though it is presented as a modern
novel.
>
> This theoretical observation allowed me to illuminate my
understanding of the novel such that it went from being a dark and
difficult text to being an open book.
>
> Ok, so someone can say this is not a theory but rather a critical
observation but I am allowing that the "show" aspect of the original
meaning of "theory" is still a crucial feature required of any theory:
just what does this theory allow us to see that we couldn't previously
see?
>
> Accepting that models might be little theories or parts of larger
theories, we can come to view the processes of literary criticism (after
New Criticism) as being like model making and or mapping. Literary
critics mostly map and model particular texts and groups of texts based
on authors. Some go on to organise, from their models, larger models of
what was happening at a particular period such as the Romantic
Movement.
>
> My point here is, that literary criticism functions a lot like
Grounded Theory (or perhaps that should be said the other way around).
Which allows us to bridge to design theory.
>
> The topics of Grounded Theory, and abductive logic, have frequently
come up on this list. With Grounded Theory one is able to use the
specific information from a particular case or event to develop useful
insights and maybe even larger models that might then be useful beyond
the particular case.
>
> I see much of design theory falling into the Grounded Theory or
Literary Criticism modes of theorising. Which is also to point out that
talking about theory without talking about methods is be caught short.
>
> Hope this is of some use.
>
>
>
> Grounded Theory - abduction - literary criticism
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|