Concept, Method & Source

P.Madhu

Is language a vehicle of meaning or conveyer belt of thought?

Shares its etymological root with Conceit!

To “take in”!"take (seed) into the womb, become pregnant,"

Concept?

Concepts are the constituents of thoughts

Is ‘non-conceptual understanding’ possible?

‘referential’? – Networked references!

Path Dependence

With concepts we classify particulars!

Concepts are methodologically (?)

arrived from observing or analyzing sources

Cloaks’ of senses?

Method: Methods are means by which concepts are either discovered or invented from sources ?

The procedure by which we weave meaning?

A procedural means to uncloak?

Method

Method – is technique- Techne- Techne is Bringing Forth – revealingTechne is linked to episteme: Knowing in the

widest senseBringing Forth is Poesis- opening upPoesis is something Poetic!

It is not a means to an end- not making, not manipulating, not manufacturing – Not merely instrumental- It is a way of revealing (Heidegger)

Means presuppose effect! Hence- not opening up!

A means is that whereby something is effected & thus sustained (Heidegger)

Methodology is a Bridge- not a dam. Not daming, storing, distributing- rather letting flow

Not an exercise in enframing

What? What Time, sequence, seriality, co-presence…

(When)What Place, habitat, ethology, ecology, space

(Where)Through What Process? Mechanism, co-

happenings, Triggers (How)What reasons/effect- bring forths (why)What name, identity, co-ordinate, gender..

(Who)

What is the Question!

Who?

Revealing ESSENCE

Committing to Essentialism

What Brings Forth the effect!

Causa = to fall (effecting): silver is the material shaped into form driven by its ‘purpose’ by silver-smith- silver smith ‘effects’ production- (effective cause)

What Brings forth (co-responsible for- occasioned -aitia) the effect (Revealing)- Poesis

NOT Whose Moralistic Lapse is the effect (Enframing)

Effective Cause is

Poesis

Enframing (s

tanding reserve)

We enframe because- discursively seduced to be enframing, daming…impulsive, actors as agents… Like our Film heroes--- who pick up fights… & be ultra emotional… methodology is becoming masala methodology, unfortunately… it boils blood… its victims think that it may be because they are ‘revolutionary’…

Poesy is more re-volutionary than enframing?... It unwinds!

SourceObject of Study? Objectified by concepts & methods? That which we try to un-cloak?

Rene Magritte

This is not a school

Sources, Method and concepts are mutually related and they reinforce/ torpedo each other

1. Sources don’t lie out there to be discovered. Even their existence can’t be recognized or acknowledged without the means of concept or method.

2. Methods are not merely neutral tools available there. They have to be invented and sharpened as we grasp our research problems better. They have to be reinvented as our political conscience improves with research acquaintance.

3. Concepts are not truth statements. They are habituated patterns of organizing facts influenced by our political sensibility and exposure to other concepts. Concepts are method dependent. Though ideally concepts are arrived as the result of a research process, without a conceptual a priori we cannot approach a research problem.

the first impression is not a fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to the seduction of the inicial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one's :first observation. Any objective examination, when duly verified, refutes the results of the first contact with the object.

-Gaston Bachelard (Psychoanalysis of fire)

Research gap?Concept creation? Establishing truth? Methodological precision?Appropriating Source?Exposing error?De-cloak meaning?

Research endeavour?

Habits die hard!

associations

Santa Muerte (Spanish for Our Lady of the Holy Death)

Order out of Chaos & Vice Versa!

Assemblage against Totalities

There is always a further!

NimithaInducedAkrama

Spoda

Nimitha - effectingAkrama: Chaos, rupture, dis-order (revealing)

Establish-through- towards?Burst-through- towards?

Usually we begin our research process from our conceptual a priori. Conceptual a priori is the positive unconscious of knowledge of the individual researchers or the research field. The objective of our research, I would recommend, should not be reproducing our conceptual a priori by means of readymade methods justified with data sources, approaching all the three uncritically.

The research process is also the process in which the researchers gain ability to handle source, method and concepts dexterously. The greater research processes take researchers to break away from conceptual a priories the dexterous they are.

A refined research process is, to my understanding, explaining or understanding the source, using the best possible method.

Methods are better to the extent they challenge the conceptual a priories. The coarsest of research endeavor on the other hand would be reproducing conceptual a priories. A still worse research process may not even be aware of the existence of the conceptual a priories within which researches are problematized.

Most of the hypothetico-deductive research projects reinvent the conceptual bias with which they started their truth-game. Conceptual a priories though are inevitable, research projects of greater authenticity move ahead by prioritizing methods over concepts. By prioritizing methods over concepts I mean challenging a priori concepts by critiquing methods by which they were produced.

Precisely, this is called methodological critique. Such a critique may free research endeavors to look at the sources in a new light

Research endeavors of greater authenticity critically examine the methods in relation to their efficacy in understanding the source. Understanding or explanation of the source through undergoing into spirals of methodological reflexivity is pivotal to research endeavors of greater authenticity. The idea is diagrammatically expressed in the Figure given above.

The diagram exposes the tentative reflexive spiral researchers may go from a priory concept to methodologically refined concept.

Of the three, among the trio: source, method and concept, I suggest, we need to be more cautious and guarded about ‘concept’. One has to be aware, concepts are not truth statements, but they are results of our attempt to systematically understand the source through a set of methods.

Concept is Krami!

Commitment to methods over understanding the source is an error we often commit. The error of committing to one or another set of methods towards understanding the source however, may not be fully avoided. Nevertheless, the awareness regarding inevitable fallaciousness of methods in understanding the source may enhance our caution against reducing truths into concepts

Research is a never ending endeavor of making sense of the source with reflexively produced methodological engagement. The moment, we declare the concepts we have drawn as pure truth, we should know, is the moment our research and scientific temperament is lost to dogmas and prejudices

DisappropriateA-signifying Puissance! PotencyVoidEventReveal, Bring-forth, open up…. Take off!

Take Off