Research and theory reflections
I think
that this weeks theme “Research and theory” was a bit different from the
previous weeks more philosophical themes. However, what theory is and what
constitutes a theory is still a bit abstract for me.
Like last
week I had a course collision, which made me unavailable for Mondays lecture.
As a result, this week’s theme was harder to grasp before the seminar. However,
this week’s texts and seminar was really helpful in order to get an idea about
what theory is and how theories change.
From what I
can understand, a theory is complex in the sense that it is a set of
propositions, which makes up a system of thoughts that describes a
phenomena/object. In that sense, a theory is built upon a set of proven
hypotheses, which proposes causes and relationships. As a result, good theories
help us formulate new hypotheses, which in return help us formulate new
theories. Something that I found to be very interesting is the fact that a
theory is something ever changing and not a fixed set of propositions. The
hypotheses that make up a theory might be disproved or a new hypothesis might
broaden the view of what a theory about something is. Furthermore, theories
answer why a phenomenon occurs while
a hypothesis tries to suggest what
will occur, which I believe is an important distinction when trying to separate
hypotheses and theory. Since theories can be really foundational they might be
overlooked when reading a paper, for instance social capital, feminism and
democracy are very basic theories which existed and was used in some of the
papers in our seminar group, but are hard for the untrained mind to recognize
and consider.
The
knowledge of how theory differs from hypotheses, what constitutes a theory, how
a theory is developed, how theory is ever changing and the importance of having
proper theories when trying to answer a research question will be helpful when
reading/writing papers in the future.
