The seminar widen my vision upon the world about theory. This is more complicated to represent as It seemed to be. As a lot of people mentioned in the seminar and will probably mention in their blog, a theory provides an explanatory framework for an observer. What does that really mean?
In order to understand what theory represents, we have to start from the very beginning. Before everything, we have to ask ourselves some question, what am I looking for, what am I doing this for .... The aim is to understand and answer a "Why". Once we do, we have the question and ready to start the research process.
Raw data, information, etc. By themselves they are pretty useless and don't mean much without the meaning or the purpose of the theory. But once added up, we start to see a certain pattern between the numbers... The pattern starts to answer in some weird and unnoticed ways the question we first asked ourselves.
Then once we have our question and the results of our researches we can start elaborate some hypothesis in order to narrow down to what we are really looking for.
Once everything is done we can create our theory on what we just talked and searched about.
Even though this would be the perfect way to do this, lots of theories has been created with a very messy process. Meaning that the search the hypothesis are a bit random from each other... Most of the time, you have a main theory and a lots of information about the question but something invalid it and it redefines your body of work and make you start over. This is an ongoing process. Called "Anarchist Theory".
The aim here is to build your theory on existing theory. I will finish this blog by the closest definition of theory I could come up with.
With my group during the seminar we came up with a theory I had already explained in my first blog reception saying that theory, or at least ideas, truths or any objection concept we believe in, will be true and stay true until proven othewise. We used the example of the black and brown bear, saying that all of those animals are only black and brown, until we find one white. And the theory will modify itself from All bears are black and brown to All bears are black, brown and white. Until we find a pinky bear.
Are we therefore to accept this as a truth or shall we reject it because we are never sure. For example, if the actual truth is only black and brown bears, we deep down we believe that there will be a white one someday and that means our current truth is false, should we reject totally this current truth without knowing if the white bear will come some day ? I'm asking this question because science can be the black and brown bears. Until they discover something new, we have to believe in our current truth.
To conclude with a definition of theory based on what I just said above, I would go with this definition :
A theory is made of propositions that aims to identify objects and their relation to each other.
This definition puts in perspective the things i've mentionned above, their relation to each other, their timeframe in time and space.
With my group during the seminar we came up with a theory I had already explained in my first blog reception saying that theory, or at least ideas, truths or any objection concept we believe in, will be true and stay true until proven othewise. We used the example of the black and brown bear, saying that all of those animals are only black and brown, until we find one white. And the theory will modify itself from All bears are black and brown to All bears are black, brown and white. Until we find a pinky bear.
Are we therefore to accept this as a truth or shall we reject it because we are never sure. For example, if the actual truth is only black and brown bears, we deep down we believe that there will be a white one someday and that means our current truth is false, should we reject totally this current truth without knowing if the white bear will come some day ? I'm asking this question because science can be the black and brown bears. Until they discover something new, we have to believe in our current truth.
To conclude with a definition of theory based on what I just said above, I would go with this definition :
A theory is made of propositions that aims to identify objects and their relation to each other.
This definition puts in perspective the things i've mentionned above, their relation to each other, their timeframe in time and space.
Hi! Seems that you understood theory concept in depth. I think it is crucial to have this understanding of what theory is and what theory is not for each and every student as after-all it sums up in our daily writing assignments. Moreover, understanding theory means understanding how to structure and sum up the raw data and information, which is, as you mentioned, quite useless while not systematically adjusted. In that way, I would add that theory is a system of ideas, that has quantitative or qualitative proof. Thank you for a great text!
ReplyDeleteI am glad to have read about your very thorough thoughts about the concept of theory. One can see that you have really processed the concept and your perception widened after the seminar. However, you didn't quite state what type of theory the article of your choice was based on. In the first blog post you made a good summary about the article, but it would have been interesting to read more about the metatheory as well – the theoretical framework behind the research. From a quick look to your paper, the researchers are anchoring the study specifically on two "camps" having a bit different view about Internet's role in promoting misperceptions.
ReplyDeleteSometimes it's indeed a bit difficult to find the theoretical background, since it's not necessarily very clearly stated in the paper itself. Thank you for your reflections!
Interesting post: we've been to the different groups this time so that your examples with bears, "anarchist theory" and explanations look quite fresh for me. In addition to your thoughts: I would add also the question "how?" before defining the theory because some of them (like the theory of analysis) just explore the existing phenomena without providing the deep analysis of reasons and consequences.
ReplyDeleteI believe that we have to be open to all the ideas and hypothesises (not blindly following some of them, of course, but, using common sense and the empirical knowledge leave the room for the probability that whatever we follow is wrong and whatever we disregard may be confirmed by the future researches).
󠆜¡Hola! I like the own definition of a theory at the end of your blogpost. That is really much the definition my group came to after the discussion we had. The description of the quite messy way to get there makes it quite clear how a theory is formed. However, I’d like to add a little bit to the way to get there. The way hypotheses are formed that you described covers more qualitative than quantitative researches. In a qualitative research you start with your research question and go into the field with a quite open mind about how it can be answered. Hypotheses are built after through the finding of the data, just as you described. But when we take a look at quantitative research, you mostly form the hypotheses that might verify or falsify your research question in advance and collect the data based on that. Your data is there then to proof or reject the hypotheses. Based on that you build the theory. At least that’s the way I learned it.
ReplyDeleteWhile I really enjoyed your explanation of how to come up with a theory, instead of everyone just trying to explain the idea behind it, I believe to recall, that the approach you write is not how you should do it. Ideally, you have a theory first and then you do your testing on it to prove it. However in practice that does not always work out and thus this anarchistic theory is formed.
ReplyDeleteHello! I like you example about the bears. Theories are constantly getting rejected and new theories replaces old outdated ideas. Some of the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries have been replaced of new more reliable data. And it’s interesting that one researcher cannot create a theory, a theory is based upon proven hypotheses and has to be verified multiple times by different researchers, and therefore one researcher can only create a hypothesis. Good job with your second blog post!
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ReplyDeleteThank you for your interesting discussion, I really enjoyed reading you post as it presented some interesting ideas.
I’ve been thinking of the definition as an explanatory framework and I start to wonder if this actually is the correct way to put it. I agree that is highlights the main feature of many theories, but at the same time I think it is necessary to keep in mind those theories that only aim to explain phenomena or predict them as mentioned in Gregors text. I appreciate how you’ve critically examined this definition and decided on a different one in the end of the post, but I think that one also excludes some types theories.
I think you example of the different colors of bears explains the complexity of theories’ validity or ”truth” very well. It shows how research is based on believing in a theory until it is contradicted by new discoveries.
Thank you so much for the enlightening blog post! It was a true pleasure to read and extremely helpful! I can't quite agree with the following sentence though: "Until they discover something new, we have to believe in our current truth." I don't think we have to believe in our current, I will call it "idea" or "assumption" (cause no matter how strong a theory is, it's always second-last and can be refuted at any time). Rather, we have to constantly doubt and question to seek and come to new knowledge. In the same way as we should not take a piece of journalistic content at face value, because of the possibility that the given news organisation has a behind-the-curtain agenda or, at least, a certain political leaning. I think we should doubt and question, and look for other, different points of view and opinions, and read other sources and strive to form a more complete idea or understanding. Again, thank you for the wonderful post!
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