My Intellectual framework
Ania Lian, May, 2003

In this document, I am making a distinction between two, in my view, conflicting models of inquiry. The commentary included underneath the figures, describes my rationale for the multi-referential model of inquiry.

Figure 1. Methodology of self-referential inquiry

   

Figure 2 Methodology of multi-referential inquiry.

Comment
If the goal of an inquiry is to understand how things are related, it can do so only by affecting those relationships i.e. by changing what it already knows. The reason for multi-referential inquiries is now more clear. Without bringing in questions that have the potential to change or affect what we know, we cannot learn beyond what we already know.  The process of affecting will be twofold:

(a)    First, the inquiry affects the relationships by ordering them and hence imposing a particular order on the world. 

(b)    Second, questions, in this model, function as symptoms of a reality which is not understood. Therefore, questions reveal incommensurability in perceptions or in the order imposed. Thus by increasing dialogue with those various perceptions, the various levels of order impact on one another thus forcing a change in the original order. The concept of dialogue in dialogic inquiry cannot be reduced to conversation as conversation builds on multilayered schemes of perception already in dialogue with one another.

In the light of these points, it can be arguable that questions about reality can be seen as questions about the past. Why the past? Because schemes of perceptions are established in relation to history and hence they describe history. We may say that we never see the present, just the past. Like observing the sky; all we see is what has been. We see what we have "witnessed" i.e. what our schemes of perception tell us to have been the case.

But our past is not fully understood as our perceptions present us with numerous conflicts: questions. Questions reveal incommensurabilities in our perceptions (concept clearly borrowed from Calhoun! 1995: 71-91). An example could be flying. At one level we know flying is a possible action as birds fly. At another level, flying seemed impossible for humans. A way of integrating these two, has been to use various tools that help humans to fly.

The point to all this is to say that an inquiry therefore does not look forward but backward in order to enable researcher to influence the implications of the past. This goal of influencing the implications of the past is perceived as the goal of influencing the future.

As the point of origin of the past cannot be established without compromising the truth about the past, the most that the objective of an inquiry can be is an attempt to reflect upon what it understands. It will not be facts that it will produce but facts as it understands them to be. And, unlike the facts that close the debate, in an inquiry of this kind, the focus is on what these understandings disguise rather than reveal (cf. Calhoun, 1995: 88). Progress, here, is not marked by knowledge that is accumulated but by a sense of a greater control that a better understanding of the past helps to generate.

Success here is not a measure of realisation of “intended goals” but a measure of the capacity to understand the goals that are being pursued or realised. Last but not least, fertility springs from the connections that both the act of reflecting and looking back open up.