Term
Paradigm
Contributed by
Nic Kipar
Definition
“Universally recognised scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers”
Kuhn, T. S. (1962) The structure of scientific revolutions. 3 edn. Chicago: The University of Chicago.
“A paradigm is a set of assumptions and perceptual orientations shared by members of a research community. Paradigms determine how members of research communities view both the phenomena their particular community studies and the research methods that should be employed to study those phenomena.”
Donmoyer, R. 2008. Paradigm. In: Given, L. (ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Main components of a paradigm:
- Ontology
- Epistemology
- Methodology
Metaphysics
Nic Kipar
“Branch of philosophy concerned with providing a comprehensive account of the most general features of reality as a whole; the study of being as such [Aristotle]. Questions about the existence and nature of minds, bodies, god, space, time, causality, unity, identity, and the world are all metaphysical issues. From Plato onwards, many philosophers have tried to determine what kinds of things (and how many of each) exist. But Kant argued that this task is impossible; he proposed instead that we consider the general structure of our thought about the world.”
Kemerling, G. (2012) Philosophy Pages. Available at: http://www.philosophypages.com/index.htm (Accessed: 21.06.18.)
“The word ‘metaphysics’ is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we currently think of as making up Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle himself did not know the word. (He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.)”
“Metaphysics is about things that do not change”
- The subject-matter of metaphysics is “being as such”
- The subject-matter of metaphysics is the first causes of things
- The subject-matter of metaphysics is that which does not change
Any of these three theses might have been regarded as a defensible statement of the subject-matter of what was called ‘metaphysics’ until the seventeenth century.”
“One might almost say that in the seventeenth century metaphysics began to be a catch-all category, a repository of philosophical problems that could not be otherwise classified as epistemology, logic, ethics or other branches of philosophy. (It was at about that time that the word ‘ontology’ was invented—to be a name for the science of being as such, an office that the word ‘metaphysics’ could no longer fill.)”
van Inwagen, P. and Sullivan, M. (2014) Metaphysics. Stanford: Stanford University. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/ (Accessed: 03.01.2016.)
“According to a certain, familiar way of dividing up the business of philosophy, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the question of what entities exist (a task that is often identified with that of drafting a “complete inventory” of the universe) whereas metaphysics seeks to explain, of those entities, what they are (i.e., to specify the “ultimate nature” of the items included in the inventory)”
Varzi, A. C. (2011) ‘On doing ontology without metaphysics’, Philosophical Perspectives, 25(Metaphysics), pp. 407-423.
Ontology
Nic Kipar
Ontology is most often seen as the starting point of all research, after which one’s epistemological and methodological positions logically follow.
Ontology makes assumptions about the nature of reality.
Guba, E. S. and Lincoln, Y. S. (1994) ‘Competing paradigms in qualitative research’, in Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.) Handbook of qualitative research. 2 ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
“Ontology derives from the Greek words for thing and rational account. In classical and speculative philosophy, ontology was the philosophical science of being. Its general aim was to provide reasoned, deductive accounts of the fundamental sorts of things that existed. Ontology was not concerned with the specific nature of empirical entities, but rather with more basic questions of the universal forms of existence. Examples of classical ontological questions are as follows: Are bodies the only things that exist, or are immaterial forms real? Is there a supreme intelligence in the universe, or is all activity reducible to mechanical motion? Are individuals alone real, or are collectivities independently real? Are there real objects of universal terms, or are universals simply names that humans give to mental abstractions? The very generality of these questions means that they will always have some connection to the investigation of natural and social phenomena. In the contemporary era, however, it would be wrong to continue to think of ontology as a fundamental science given that hypothetical-empirical methods of research (at least in the natural sciences) have permanently displaced the deductive-rationalist methods of classical philosophy.”
Noonan, J. 2008. Ontology. In: Given, L. (ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
“Branch of metaphysics concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things that actually exist. Thus, the “ontological commitments” of a philosophical position include both its explicit assertions and its implicit presuppositions about the existence of entities, substances, or beings of particular kinds.”
Kemerling, G. (2012) Philosophy Pages. Available at: http://www.philosophypages.com/index.htm (Accessed: 21.06.18.)
“As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of what ontology is, so it’s only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists.”
Hofweber, T. (2017) Logic and Ontology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/ (Accessed: 21.06.18.)
Ontology vs Metaphysics
Ontology is generally considered to be a sub-field of metaphysics. It is concerned with ‘being’ as such, and was coined in the 17th century, when metaphysics had become a catch-all that required specialisations to be meaningful.
“Perhaps the wider application of the word ‘metaphysics’ was due to the fact that the word ‘physics’ was coming to be a name for a new, quantitative science, the science that bears that name today, and was becoming increasingly inapplicable to the investigation of many traditional philosophical problems about changing things (and of some newly discovered problems about changing things).”
“Christian Wolff attempted to justify this more inclusive sense of the word by this device: while the subject-matter of metaphysics is being, being can be investigated either in general or in relation to objects in particular categories. He distinguished between ‘general metaphysics’ (or ontology), the study of being as such, and the various branches of ‘special metaphysics’, which study the being of objects of various special sorts, such as souls and material bodies.”
van Inwagen, P. and Sullivan, M. (2014) Metaphysics. Stanford: Stanford University. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/ (Accessed: 03.01.2016.)
Epistemology
Nic Kipar
Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, how it is defined, what can be known, and what are its limits.
How the researcher comes to know that reality (ontology)
Guba, E. S. and Lincoln, Y. S. (1994) ‘Competing paradigms in qualitative research’, in Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.) Handbook of qualitative research. 2 ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
“Epistemology, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the theory or science of the
method and ground of knowledge. It is a core area of philosophical study that includes the
sources and limits, rationality and justification of knowledge.”
Stone, L. 2008. Epistemology. In: Given, L. (ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks.
“Branch of philosophy that investigates the possibility, origins, nature, and extent of human knowledge. Although the effort to develop an adequate theory of knowledge is at least as old as Plato’s Theaetetus, epistemology has dominated Western philosophy only since the era of Descartes and Locke, as an extended dispute between rationalism and empiricism over the respective importance of a priori and a posteriori origins. Contemporary postmodern thinkers (including many feminist philosophers) have proposed the contextualization of knowledge as part of an intersubjective process.”
Kemerling, G. (2012) Philosophy Pages. Available at: http://www.philosophypages.com/index.htm (Accessed: 21.06.18.)
“Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one’s own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.”
Steup, M. (2005) Epistemology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/ (Accessed: 21.06.2018).
Methodology
Nic Kipar
How the researcher accesses and reports what is learned about the reality
Guba, E. S. and Lincoln, Y. S. (1994) ‘Competing paradigms in qualitative research’, in Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.) Handbook of qualitative research. 2 ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
“Research methodology consists of the assumptions, postulates, rules, and methods—the blueprint or roadmap—that researchers employ to render their work open to analysis, critique, replication, repetition, and/or adaptation and to choose research methods.”
Schensul, J. J. 2008. Methodology. In: Given, L. (ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
“The strategy, plan of action, process or design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and linking the choice and use of methods to the desired outcomes.”
Crotty, M. (1998) The foundations of social research: meaning and perspective in the research process. London: Sage.
Methods
Nic Kipar
Tools and techniques with which the researcher collects and analyses their data.
“By methods, we mean that range of approaches used in educational research to gather data which are to be used as a basis for inference and interpretation, for explanation and prediction.… If methods refer to techniques and procedures used in the process of data-gathering, the aim of methodology then is to describe approaches to, kinds and paradigms of
research. (p. 47)”
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2007). Research methods in education (6th ed.). London: Routledge.
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