APPLICATION OF IARM TO THESIS

Step 1 Differentiating Researcher’s Position

Into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge (Polyani 1958:viii). In Beyond Method (1983:21) Gareth Morgan sets out ‘A Framework for Analysing the Logics of Different Research Strategies’. The first step a researcher must take in Morgan’s framework is to clarify and set out their ‘constitutive assumptions … either implicate or explicate … regarding ontology and human nature that define the researcher’s view of the social world’ (ibid). He goes on to say that:

By identifying the researcher’s assumptions about human beings and the world in which they live, we can identify the basic paradigm that serves as a foundation of inquiry (ibid).

Ontology

The central problem with how we come to know – ontology - is a perceptual problem that I think the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics provides the best explanation for. The Copenhagen interpretation of nature asserts that the nature of perceptual reality is dualistic in that it is

fundamentally constituted of both particles and waves that exist as

complementary aspects of one quantum reality. On the level of social science I therefore believe that reality consists of aspects of both the realist and nominalist boundaries and is not constituted of either realism or nominalism - rather both exist as complementary boundaries (extremes) of the one CAS system of (Social Science) reality.

Human Nature

With regard to human nature I believe that humans are neither fully determined nor do they possess absolute free will - rather I believe that humans are constrained by their history of structural coupling to their

environment (deep structure) but are free to express that in as many different ways as there are human beings. In other words, we are not free from our biological deep structure, nor are we free from our experiences of life that honed the emergent biology into its present form. However, I do have the capacity (freedom) to change the way I relate to these experiences, our

structural coupling, from dystonic to systonic and vice versa. In other words, I can’t change what happened, was selected and became irreversible as a

constitutive event in my life - however, I can alter how I am identified with those constitutive events / experiences – my relationship to them.

Epistemology

The next step in Morgan’s framework is to identify and articulate the

researcher’s epistemological stance because ‘scientific knowledge is shaped by the way researchers attempt to concretize the ground assumptions [step 1] that underwrite their work’ (Morgan, 1983:21). I can’t help but do this because the process of clarifying what positions in the structure of social thought I identify with (step 1) means that I look both to discover and reinforce my position by scanning the literature for positive and negative feedback about it. In this way my ‘ground assumptions give rise to different grounds for

knowledge about the world’ (ibid).

Scientific knowledge claims to be different from other types of metaphysical / religious knowledge in that it only speaks to those aspects of reality which it can measure. However, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle reminds us that the reality we seek to measure is not precisely measurable. Measurement is ultimately confronted with a problem of perception because to perceive, and hence be able to measure, something on the smallest scales we have to use the matter wave duality, in the form of light, to observe another form of the duality, say an electron, whereby the effect of one hitting the other disturbs the system. There is no way around this as humans can’t perceive without the light, as our perceptive apparatus, our eyes, depend on light to record the information needed to measure in our brains.

Due to the dualistic nature of reality we can only have precise knowledge of one or the other of its boundaries (the process or structure) and the more accurate the measurement of one the more obscure becomes knowledge of the other and vice versa. However, we can have probabilistic knowledge of the whole of reality providing us with useful information, if not absolute

predictability, by including both the process (wave) and structure (particle)

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boundaries of reality in our analysis. The Copenhagen interpretation shows how the boundary of knowledge through which we know reality depends on which one we choose to measure it through. Therefore we can have precise accuracy of measurement if we choose one or the other boundary to focus the measurement on and if we so choose we must state which aspect we have decided to focus on. As I believe that the ontological position that best represents our present understanding of reality is that of complementarity then, in order to remain congruent with my ontology, I assume that the best way to understand that reality is to include both boundaries of the system as complementary aspects in any analysis of a research situation.

It is therefore only going to be possible for me to generate probabilistic, rather than absolute, knowledge of any social scientific research project - however, in doing so I believe I will be representing the situation investigated, if not

precisely, at least accurately. My epistemological position is therefore probabilistic - which although not absolutely precise, will at least be well rounded in its incorporation of the whole system under investigation, rather than an over–focus on certain aspects excluding knowledge of the others leading to an unbalanced view of the whole situation.

Methodology

The methodology is primarily about how we go about the task of transforming our deep structure assumptions about the nature of reality into actions in the world through the adoption of various methods and the discussion and analysis of the same. Methodology is the approach we take to investigating the world based on our assumptions, and for me this level is the ‘fusing’ (Habermas) of our internal deep structure with the external surface structure of the world through action. As we engage the world through action, speech being a form of action, then the methodological approach engaged will be constrained by my deep structure, focussed by the research question, and be contingent upon the research situation (context). In other words the best methodology for a particular research project depends on the question: What are we attempting to demonstrate, and what is the research situation itself most suited to - qualitative, quantitative or both?