Reflection: what I learnt during week 39

Before beginning week 39, I implied theories and researches methods in my previous academic works but I was not able to evaluate their profundity and justify, for instance, if it is relevant and qualified theory. To be more concrete, what I learnt about the theory:

·         Theory provides an explanatory framework for an observation;

·         Theory is a form of practice. Theory is implied when the activity (research) is being carried out;

·         Theory is established and confirmed by experiments which lead to solid explanations;

·         Theory is a specific constructed model in order to represent reality;

·         Theory is about looking (the term praxis) and keeping the distance when you observe the phenomena.

There are few approaches to theories:

·         Scientific: theory is a constructed model which is based on scientific method and represent the world in a logic way.

·         Philosophical: theory is the statement which is not necessarily scientific tested; the ideas are more important rather than empirical data.

·         Post-humanistic: theory is about explanations and connections between phenomena, prepositions identify the object.  

It is important to point out that there is no consensus what theory is. The definition of theories varies depending on perspectives and goals of theory.

Theory vs truth

During the lecture it was said that “theory can be regarded as truth”.  The teacher asked us to think why the word “regard” is used instead of the formulation: theory is truth. And very interesting explanation came up. Theory is not the same as truth. There is always a chance that another theory will deny the previous “truth” stated by theory. Therefore, I would say that theory is current and temporal but not universal and long term truth. 

Theory and paradigms

Discussion about theory and truth leads to the topic of paradigms. As it was said during the seminar theories do not stand forever and shifting of paradigms encourages revolution of science and at that time new theories are formulated regarding to changed perspective to the point of view.

Theory and hypothesis

During the seminar most of our time was spent on defining what theory and hypothesis are. It was agreed that hypothesis is a tool to construct the theory. Hypothesis should be testable and usually it is based on assumptions and others theories.  It is worth mentioning that rejected hypothesis do not always deny the whole theory. Wrong hypothesis enforce to formulate new hypothesis and in theory is delineated but not necessarily the theory is admitted as false.  

Group discussion   

Our group was wondering about one common definition of theory. We agreed there are a lot of attributes and requirements regarding to theory but there is no commonly agreed definition. We came up to conclusion that it is impossible to determine the theory in one sentence. Also, in group we raised the question about the difference between knowledge and theory. It was difficult to find the answer, but it was agreed that knowledge is outcome of theory what is perceived as common agreement. Theory is more about the process trying to find out the answer and the significance of phenomena.

Additional literature:

1. Cooper, B., Glaesser, J., Hammersley, M. & Gomm, R. (2012). Challenging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide Explorations in Case-focused Causal Analysis. 
2. Corbin, J, Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of Qualitative research. 
3. Flick, U. (2007). Designing Qualitative research.
4. Mansfield E, D., Pevehouse, J. C. (2009). Quantitative Approaches. In The Oxford Handbook of International Relations