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Armchair Theorizing
Armchair theory is an approach to providing new developments in a field that does not involve analysis of empirical (real-world) data. The term is typically pejorative, implying such scholarship is weak, frivolous, and disconnected from reality. Armchair scholarship is often contrasted with the scientific method, which involves the active investigation of nature through data collection or testing and developing rigorous mathematical models. Anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski was a major critic whose views are often summarized in the saying " ome off the verandah", encouraging fieldwork and participant observation. See also * A priori and a posteriori * Logical truth * Meta-analysis * Thought experiment A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is ... Notes References * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empirical Data
Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, evidence must be public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states, so th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Method
The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and medieval world. The scientific method involves careful observation coupled with rigorous skepticism, because Philosophy of science#Observation inseparable from theory, cognitive assumptions can distort the interpretation of the Perception#Process and terminology, observation. Scientific inquiry includes creating a testable hypothesis through inductive reasoning, testing it through experiments and statistical analysis, and adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results. Although procedures vary across Branches of science, fields, the underlying #Process, process is often similar. In more detail: the scientific method involves making conjectures (hypothetical explanations), predicting the logical consequences of hypothesis, then ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Model
A mathematical model is an abstract and concrete, abstract description of a concrete system using mathematics, mathematical concepts and language of mathematics, language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed ''mathematical modeling''. Mathematical models are used in applied mathematics and in the natural sciences (such as physics, biology, earth science, chemistry) and engineering disciplines (such as computer science, electrical engineering), as well as in non-physical systems such as the social sciences (such as economics, psychology, sociology, political science). It can also be taught as a subject in its own right. The use of mathematical models to solve problems in business or military operations is a large part of the field of operations research. Mathematical models are also used in music, linguistics, and philosophy (for example, intensively in analytic philosophy). A model may help to explain a system and to study the effects of different components, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronisław Malinowski
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (; 7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942) was a Polish anthropologist and ethnologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropology. Malinowski was born and raised in what was part of the Austrian partition of Poland, Kraków. He graduated from King John III Sobieski 2nd High School. In the years 1902–1906 he studied at the philosophy department of the Jagiellonian University and received his doctorate there in 1908. In 1910, at the London School of Economics (LSE), he worked on exchange and economics, analysing Aboriginal Australia through ethnographic documents. In 1914, he travelled to Australia. He conducted research in the Trobriand Islands and other regions in New Guinea and Melanesia where he stayed for several years, studying indigenous cultures. Returning to England after World War I, he published his principal work, '' Argonauts of the Western Pacific' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Off The Verandah
Off the verandah (alt. spelling off the veranda; longer, come down off the verandah) is a phrase often attributed to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects along with them. In this context, it is also interpreted as criticism of armchair theorizing. Origin While often used to describe Malinowski's message and occasionally attributed directly to him, the origins of the phrase are unclear, and it has also been attributed to Ian Jarvie's criticism of Malinowski's idea in his 1964 '' The Revolution in Anthropology'', in which he paraphrased Malinowski's message to his followers: Significance The phrase refers to the argument promoted by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski who stressed the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects alongside them. Malinowski emphasised the importance of detailed participant observation and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Participant Observation
Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner-scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography. This type of methodology is employed in many disciplines, particularly anthropology (including cultural anthropology and ethnology), sociology (including sociology of culture and cultural criminology), communication studies, human geography, and social psychology. Its aim is to gain a close and intimate familiarity with a given group of individuals (such as a religious, occupational, youth group, or a particular community) and their practices through an intensive involvement with people in their cultural environment, usually over an extended period of time. The concept "participant observation" was first coined in 1924 by Eduard C. Lindeman (1885-1953), an American pioneer in adult education influenced by John Dewey and Danish educator-philosopher N.F.S.Grundtvig, in his 1925 book ''Social Discovery: An Approach to the Study of Func ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Priori And A Posteriori
('from the earlier') and ('from the later') are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on experience. knowledge is independent from any experience. Examples include mathematics,Some associationist philosophers have contended that mathematics comes from experience and is not a form of any ''a priori'' knowledge () tautologies and deduction from pure reason. Galen Strawson has stated that an argument is one in which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science." () knowledge depends on empirical evidence. Examples include most fields of science and aspects of personal knowledge. The terms originate from the analytic methods found in '' Organon'', a collection of works by Aristotle. Prior analytics () is about deductive logic, which comes from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Truth
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic. Broadly speaking, a logical truth is a statement which is true regardless of the truth or falsity of its constituent propositions. In other words, a logical truth is a statement which is not only true, but one which is true under all interpretations of its logical components (other than its logical constants). Thus, logical truths such as "if p, then p" can be considered tautologies. Logical truths are thought to be the simplest case of statements which are analytically true (or in other words, true by definition). All of philosophical logic can be thought of as providing accounts of the nature of logical truth, as well as logical consequence. Logical truths are generally considered to be ''necessarily true''. This is to say that they are such that no situation could arise in which they could fail to be true. The view that logical statements are necessarily true is sometimes treated as equivalent to saying that lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meta-analysis
Meta-analysis is a method of synthesis of quantitative data from multiple independent studies addressing a common research question. An important part of this method involves computing a combined effect size across all of the studies. As such, this statistical approach involves extracting effect sizes and variance measures from various studies. By combining these effect sizes the statistical power is improved and can resolve uncertainties or discrepancies found in individual studies. Meta-analyses are integral in supporting research grant proposals, shaping treatment guidelines, and influencing health policies. They are also pivotal in summarizing existing research to guide future studies, thereby cementing their role as a fundamental methodology in metascience. Meta-analyses are often, but not always, important components of a systematic review. History The term "meta-analysis" was coined in 1976 by the statistician Gene V. Glass, Gene Glass, who stated ''"Meta-analysis refers t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thought Experiment
A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is meant to test our intuitions about morality or other fundamental philosophical questions. History The ancient Greek , "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean geometry, Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought experiment. Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the equivalent German term . Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term in 1820. By 1883, Ernst Mach used in a different sense, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Methodology
Economic methodology is the study of methods, especially the scientific method, in relation to economics, including principles underlying economic reasoning. In contemporary English, 'methodology' may reference theoretical or systematic aspects of a method (or several methods). Philosophy and economics also takes up methodology at the intersection of the two subjects. Scope General methodological issues include similarities and contrasts to the natural sciences and to other social sciences and, in particular, to: * the definition of economics * the scope of economics as defined by its methods * fundamental principles and operational significance of economic theory * methodological individualism versus holism in economics * the role of simplifying assumptions such as rational choice and profit maximizing in explaining or predicting phenomena * descriptive/ positive, prescriptive/normative, and applied uses of theory * the scientific status and expanding domain of econo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Methodology
Philosophical methodology encompasses the methods used to philosophize and the study of these methods. Methods of philosophy are procedures for conducting research, creating new theories, and selecting between competing theories. In addition to the description of methods, philosophical methodology also compares and evaluates them. Philosophers have employed a great variety of methods. Methodological skepticism tries to find principles that cannot be doubted. The geometrical method deduces theorems from self-evident axioms. The phenomenological method describes first-person experience. Verificationists study the conditions of empirical verification of sentences to determine their meaning. Conceptual analysis decomposes concepts into fundamental constituents. Common-sense philosophers use widely held beliefs as their starting point of inquiry, whereas ordinary language philosophers extract philosophical insights from ordinary language. Intuition-based methods, like thought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
