CONNECTING WITH OTHERS

Once the epistemology is identified and articulated, and the necessary

connections with the schemas of other researchers, past and present, are

made, the path, anchored and constrained by step 1, becomes more focused as the researcher continues to grow in confidence about their ground

assumptions / view. However, it is important to realise that the increasing confidence and certainty involves a price: the moment my position is

articulated, other, in most instances equally valid, positions will be excluded and the clearer and more confident I become, by being thoroughgoing with step 2, the stronger becomes the tendency to exclude other views and

approaches. What’s important here is for me to be able to understand why I identify dystonically with certain positions and epistemologies and systonically with others, because in doing so I will understand better how I am identified with my own position and therefore how I am related to those I identify dystonically with.

Constrained Complementary Pantheist

My Theological position is well summarised by Doyne Farmer: For me as a … scientist, my deep-down motivation has always been to understand the universe around me. For me as a pantheist, nature is God. So by understanding God I get a little closer to God (in Waldrop 1992:319).

The Complementary nature of my Ontological position is such that at the deepest level the process and structure aspects of nature merge into the one indivisible process - intiffegration. From this process, intiffegration, spatio- temporal structures such as the human being emerge Constrained by their HSC about which it is only possible to have Probabilistic knowledge. The methodology and methods that are best suited to rendering that knowledge useful are Contingent upon the research situation and the temperament of the researcher.

Complementarity

The Copenhagen interpretation asserts that the realist / nominalist positions don’t exist as either / or versions of the fundamental nature of reality; rather they exist as mutually exclusive yet jointly essential boundaries of the one system / reality. This interpretation, among the most successful physical theories of all time, shows that knowledge of reality is possible in either form, and exactly which form it is achieved in depends on the choice of views, which position, the investigator adopts. However, the knowledge so gained will always be short of absolute because investigating reality from either position alters it because the researcher becomes / is part of the investigation /

experiment. The inclusion of the observer in this way introduces uncertainties that mean we can only have knowledge of complex adaptive systems accurate to certain degrees of probability.

Dialectical

Dialectical thinking is also an ancient way of thinking which ‘places all the emphasis on change’ and suggests that change itself is bought about by conflicting opposites (Rowan & Reason, 1981:129). It means that I see all things as interrelated and that if we take any view / position ‘to its extreme

and idealise it actually turns into its opposite’ (ibid:131), because all views are relative.

Critical Theorists

Critical Theorists focus on two levels of understanding: a surface level and a deep structure level, wherein the underlying sources of a given reality are presumed to reside (Gioia & Pitre, 1990:589) ' … they look at ways that reified deep structures embedded in the status quo affect human action’ (Putnam, 1983 in ibid).

Speculative Theorist

‘This kind of scientist is creative and aggressive and is both biased and rigid in defense of his position’ (Rowan, in Reason & Rowan, 1981:39). Radical Naturalist

In their (1979) work Burrell and Morgan set out what they see as the four basic paradigms of social scientists: Interpretive; Functionalist; Radical Humanist; and Radical Structuralist (22). The two paradigms I most closely identify with are Radical Humanist and Radical Structuralist. Radical

Humanists believe in the notions of: totality - the understanding of total systems; structure – the configuration of relationships which characterise totalities; contradiction – similarly to dialectics, which sees those relationships as contradictory and antagonistic; and crisis – whereby the:

… contradictions within a given totality reach a point where they can no longer be contained. The ensuing crisis … is viewed as the point of transformation from one totality to another … (Burrell & Morgan, 1979:359).

And the Radical Structuralist, whose deep structure is best explicated in the philosophy of Fitche, (1762-1814), who was:

… a follower of Kant, and his brand of subjective idealism rested upon the assumption that individual consciousness is a continuously creative entity generating a perpetual stream of ideas, concepts and perspectives through which a world of external mind is created. From Fitche’s point of view, any understanding of this created reality involved understanding the nature, structure and functioning of conscious mind (Burrell & Morgan, 1979:279).

[Fitche viewed] human beings as externalising their experiences into a form of reality which in turn is reflected back upon them, and through

which they become conscious of themselves and their actions (ibid, 1979:280).

As I sit right on the line dividing the Radical Humanist and Radical Structuralist paradigms, utilising aspects of both, I have decided to call it the paradigm of the Radical Naturalist, which more accurately reflects my position.