Easiest Explanations of Research Philosophies

If you are here, it means you are here to read this blog and if you are interested in reading this blog, before you proceed, some terms must be made clear. (the explanation may not be 100% correct if you already know the terms, depends on your understanding of the terms)

Epistemology: epistemology studies the theory of knowledge. It educates regarding the methods, validity and scope or difference between beliefs which are justified. It is one the human natures knowledge and understanding and for the acquisition of which we use different types of alternative investigation methods and inquiries. In epistemology, focus is on finding out the relationship between the knower and what we know already, and if anything is known then how we make sure that we know that known thing, and during that what is considered as knowledge or what is to be counter as knowledge. Furthermore, we can find the existence of epistemological positions known as positivism and interpretivism.

Positivism: in positivism, it is believed that knowledge is legitimate if and only if it is acquired through scientific methods. They accept only fact which are derived from scientific methods. It assumes that not only the researcher is separate from outcomes of research but also separate from affecting the outcomes of research.

Interpretivism: it does inquiry to understand a general population but to understand a particular phenomenon. They are believed to be non-manipulative and their research is based on real world situations. It is the most approached theoretical framework for most of the qualitative researches.

Ontology: ontology is another research philosophy which emphasizes to study the being or existence. The nature of reality is dealt through ontology. As a system of belief, it interprets an individual on what are fact constituted of. Moving to study of being or existence, it is related to a question to whether or not perceive social entities subjective or objective. Now objectivism, as a position of ontology, asserts that there is an existence between social phenomenon and the meaning whereas subjective says the existence of social phenomenon and meaning accomplishes because of social actors and this keeps happening.

Axiology: in the simplest words, it struggles to clarify the subject of your research. For suppose your subject is world, now axiology attempts clearing that whether you are trying to predict world or just understand the world. So, now we can say it basically refers to the aim of conducting your research. This explains the important part in your research like what is valued by researcher, the understanding of world or prediction of it.

Explanation of my philosophy as Epistemology, Axiology and Ontology:

I think it is necessary to tell the who ones who may know to how to know what they know. the era name can have labelled as a dark era if people living in at don’t know to measure their existing knowledge. For suppose, you give your weeks to complete a book reading. At the end you are wondering what do you know? and what have you learnt? Epistemology as a theoretical framework is what just does the work. In this way, the outcomes of any research are effective and efficient. As mentioned below, not everything in the world had/has been discovered. There are methods rather thousands of methods which are to be discovered in order to acquire knowledge in one of the best ways.

But wait, can I do all this without ontological approach and the answer is surely no. one cannot accept any facts until and unless it is explained that the facts which were just shared are how constituted.

And what if I am conducting research without any purpose, or let us say I don’t the aim of my research. At a time, I must be clear. I must know what I am trying to bring in or what has been resulted after I finish my research. I think if we cannot ride two horses at the same time then we must not confuse people through our research work that on what we are actually trying to focus.

Be rational according to your classification as Aristotelian view says that men are rational animals. Believing and following his perspective of being rational, there are thousands of things which are to be discovered. As said by Aristotle again,” many things had been discovered and had been forgotten.” But that is not always the case when you have made good discovery what people have really been looking for like Gravity. Epistemology is based on rationality and producing good quality outcomes including coming up with some slid evidences. One does not easily believe on what he/she hears or happens to see. For suppose, if one says that people have been on moon, so, how come I believe that if there are no solid evidences. There are things that need to be discovered. Discovery should be dynamic. Why, how, when, where etc. are to be answered. For a better understanding of things, and studying the knowledge, one must keep producing good quality results by conducting good quality researches to enrich the literature and develop much-needed theories. In social sciences, theoretical development and meaningful research practices are what really matter. Epistemology can be considered best for developing beneficial theories that can lead darker generations to a brighter one. By saying this, one can never deny the fact that other research philosophies are as much important as epistemology. Ignoring any of them can result bad quality researches.

At the end, it will be injustice if I don’t mention that there are countless things that are yet to be discovered.