dialectical investigative methods

Necessary opposites.
Examples in physics, history, argumentation, and methods.

dialectical methods of argument.

	*history \| examples \| steps \| analysis \| defining dialectic \| concluding lesson*


Heisenberg's		Einstein's
Uncertainty Principle		Relativity Theory

Examining dialectical approaches to scientific methods in physics.

A microcosm of uncertainty and macrocosm of gravity waves.

"in many ways, these two theories appear to be opposites. General relativity concerns the cosmic motions of galaxies and the universe, while quantum mechanics probes the subatomic world.

Michio Kaku, Beyond Einstein, p. 37.

Examining dialectical investigative methods in history.

"It is an old idea that the more pointedly and logically we formulate a thesis, the more irresistibly it cries out for its antithesis."

Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi.

When making an argument you need a convincing approach. Using two different means to evaluate, cross examine or analytically test evidence is a good means of determining the veracity of material you are finding.

Inevitability- means that events are driven by the forces of nature or society and thus people are at the mercy of events determined by external factors.

Contingency- one event is dependent on preceding events for it and subsequent actions to occur.

Inevitability versus contingency are two different approaches to interpreting facts and answering the question of why events occur as they do.

Dialectical opposites
Examples
Categories	inevitability	contingency
geographical determinism	drought	irrigation
technological determinism	industrial revolution	serendipity, mistakes
economic determinism	the great crash & depression of 1929	money as a fetish

Many forms of thought suggest event had to happen as they did because the underlying forces determine the outcome and this is called determinism. Many other opposing authorities argue that errors, correcting other peoples mistakes, and unexpected outcomes all undermine the deterministic forces at work and thus confound a simple deterministic explanation of events.

When using archival materials, documents, pictures, maps or scientific evidence before applying some means to test the factual evidence derived from these sources consider the following steps:

What is the date of the material?
Who is its author, maker, or purveyor?
When did the evidence come to light?
How does the material reveal important information? What does it not reveal?
What is significant about the evidence you have found? How is it not significant?
Where is this evidence going to lead you: directly to or astray from what?
Why is this investigation so important in
1. a) what it does reveal and
2. b) what it hides?

Which of the above seven steps are posed in a dialectical fashion?

Revolution versus cultural stasis

The role of uncertainty, or active doubt, as Rene Descartes, insisted, is essential to appreciate as part of any rigorous method of inquiry.

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."

"I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain."

"For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance."

"Doubt is the origin of wisdom."

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method.

History is a story we tell one another about our origins and development. The facts of the story should arise, in part, from a reasonable and judicious use of sources to construct a tale that is believable because it is supported by evidence that is reliable, testable, and reinforced by other sources to account for what we believe occurred in the past. We are after all what our past allows us to become based on the gifts our ancestors have left to us to pass along to our progeny.

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Walt Whitman

Created on or before March '05, revised on 16 October 2007, 1 November 2009, & Last Updated on June 23, 2013.

By Joseph Siry

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history | examples | steps | analysis | defining dialectic | concluding lesson

Michio Kaku, Beyond Einstein, p. 37.

"It is an old idea that the more pointedly and logically we formulate a thesis, the more irresistibly it cries out for its antithesis."

Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi.

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method.