Quotessence
Home / Topics / Methodology Quotes

Methodology Quotes

Browse 163 quotes about Methodology.

Related topics

ThinkingWayIdeasMethodPeopleDifferentTechniqueTheory

Methodology Quotes

“In Dialektik der Aufklärung discussions of Kant's ideas feature more than those of any other philosopher. Those discussions, however, rarely attempt to understand the argumentative structure of Kant's Philosophy. Kant's ideas are invoked largely as an aide to gaining greater insight into the broader phenomenon of the evolution of modern reason. The text's treatment of Kant's work is, as a consequence, fragmentary and partial. Neither scholarly accuracy nor systematic reconstruction plays a role in Horkheimer and Adorno's methodology.”

MethodologyKantAdornoHorkheimer
Author:Brian O'Connor
Create image

“In Uganda, I wrote a questionaire that I had my research assistants give; on it, I asked about the embalasassa, a speckled lizard said to be poisonous and to have been sent by Prime minsister Milton Obote to kill Baganda in the late 1960s. It is not poisonous and was no more common in the 1960s than it had been in previous decades, as Makerere University science professors announced on the radio and stated in print… I wrote the question, What is the difference between basimamoto and embalasassa? Anyone who knows anything about the Bantu language—myself included—would know the answer was contained in the question: humans and reptiles are different living things and belong to different noun classes… A few of my informants corrected my ignorance… but many, many more ignored the translation in my question and moved beyond it to address the history of the constructs of firemen and poisonous lizards without the slightest hesitation. They disregarded language to engage in a discussion of events… My point is not about the truth of the embalasassa story… but rather that the labeling of one thing as ‘true’ and the other as ‘fictive’ or ‘metaphorical’—all the usual polite academic terms for false—may eclipse all the intricate ways in which people use social truths to talk about the past. Moreover, chronological contradictions may foreground the fuzziness of certain ideas and policies, and that fuzziness may be more accurate than any exact historical reconstruction… Whether the story of the poisionous embalasassa was real was hardly the issue; there was a real, harmless lizard and there was a real time when people in and around Kampala feared the embalasassa. They feared it in part because of beliefs about lizards, but mainly what frightened people was their fear of their government and the lengths to which it would go to harm them. The confusions and the misunderstandings show what is important; knowledge about the actual lizard would not.”

GovernmentTruthLanguageKnowledgeHistoryInterviewsBeliefsConstructsMethodologyInterviewUgandaOral HistoryInterviewingConstructionsBasimamotoEmbalasassaGovernment PowerSocial TruthSocial Truths
Book:Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Studies on the History of Society and Culture)
Create image

“The proper METHOD for studying poetry and good letters is the method of contemporary biologists, that is careful first-hand examination of the matter, and continual COMPARISON of one ‘slide’ or specimen with another. No man is equipped for modern thinking until he has understood the anecdote of Agassiz and the fish: A post-graduate student equipped with honours and diplomas went to Agassiz to receive the final and finishing touches. The great man offered him a small fish and told him to describe it. Post-Graduate Student: “That’s only a sun-fish” Agassiz: “I know that. Write a description of it.” After a few minutes the student returned with the description of the Ichthus Heliodiplodokus, or whatever term is used to conceal the common sunfish from vulgar knowledge, family of Heliichterinkus, etc., as found in textbooks of the subject. Agassiz again told the student to describe the fish. The student produced a four-page essay. Agassiz then told him to look at the fish. At the end of the three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it. — ABC of Reading (1934; New Directions)”

EducationComparisonMethodologyPedagogyLiterary TheoryEzra PoundComparative BiologyLouis Agassiz
Author:Ezra Pound
Create image

“The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.”

PeaceLeadershipConflictArt Of WarMethodologyEmpireSun TzuXi AnQin Shi Huang Management
Author:David G. Jones
Create image

“The fact that scientists do not consciously practice a formal methodology is very poor evidence that no such methodology exists. It could be said—has been said—that there is a distinctive methodology of science which scientists practice unwittingly, like the chap in Molière who found that all his life, unknowingly, he had been speaking prose.”

ScienceEvidenceProseMethodologyScientistsMoliereMolière
Book:Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought: Memoirs, American Philosophical Society
Create image

“Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical spirit is fallibilism: namely, the understanding that all our empirical knowledge is tentative, incomplete and open to revision in the light of new evidence or cogent new arguments (though, of course, the most well-established aspects of scientific knowledge are unlikely to be discarded entirely). . . . I stress that my use of the term 'science' is not limited to the natural sciences, but includes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analogous to those employed in the natural sciences. (Please note the limitation to questions of fact. I intentionally exclude from my purview questions of ethics, aesthetics, ultimate purpose, and so forth.) Thus, 'science' (as I use the term) is routinely practiced not only by physicists, chemists and biologists, but also by historians, detectives, plumbers and indeed all human beings in (some aspects of) our daily lives. (Of course, the fact that we all practice science from time to time does not mean that we all practice it equally well, or that we practice it equally well in all areas of our lives.)”

LifeScienceKnowledgePracticeArgumentCriticalPhysicsObservationBiologyChemistryInvestigationTestingWorldviewDetectivesMethodologyNatural ScienceDefinitionExperimentHistoriansEmpiricalCogencyFallibilism
Author:Alan Sokal
Create image

“Justice White's conclusion is perhaps correct, if one assumes that the task of a court of law is to plumb the intent of the particular Congress that enacted a particular provision. That methodology is not mine nor, I think, the one that courts have traditionally followed. It is our task, as I see it, not to enter the minds of the Members of Congress - who need have nothing in mind in order for their votes to be both lawful and effective - but rather to give fair and reasonable meaning to the text of the United States Code, adopted by various Congresses at various times.”

IfsThinkingNeedsGivingMindStatesLawOrderJusticeWhiteUnitedUnited StatesMinesParticularMembersFairsTasksVoteCourtAssumingCongressVariousConclusionCodeReasonableAdoptedProvisionMethodology
Author:Antonin Scalia
Create image

“Usually I draw in relation to my painting, what I am working on at the time. On a lucky day a surprising balance of forms and spaces will appear... making itself, the image taking hold. This in turn moves me toward painting - anxious to get to the same place, with the actuality of paint and light.”

LightMovingFormTurnsSpacePaintingBalanceLuckyDrawsRelationPaintAnxiousSurprisingActualityMethodologyLucky Day
Book:The drawings of Philip Guston
Create image

“I think it is now time for social scientists to step out of the shadow and to establish an advanced social sciences methodology that integrates science (third-person view) social transformation (second-person view) and the evolution of self (first-person view) into a coherent framework of consciousness-based action research”

ThinkingFirstsPersonsSelfActionSocialViewsConsciousnessStepsEvolutionResearchShadowScientistThirdsTransformationFrameworkFirst PersonIntegratingMethodologySocial ScienceThird PersonSocial Transformation
Author:Otto Scharmer
Create image

“I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique.”

ThinkingGivingPurposeReadyOughtSkillsFairsScientistPhilosopherExtremesTechniqueCynicalMethodologyInvestigatingBiceps
Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset
Create image

“When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular" writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.”

GivingWritingStoriesLightCertainCoursesLiteratureLossCasesWorstPromiseOffersToughTraditionErrorsPhilosopherDisappointmentDeeperInsightTalesOperationsHeroicInstructionEstablishmentSweetnessHypothesisTextbooksCorrectionsMethodologyHunchesConjectureInsipidUpbeatRefutation
Book:Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History
Create image