Research Roadmap
"If we knew what we were doing, |
This is a research roadmap not a knowledge roadmap, because while research creates knowledge, research itself is not the knowledge it creates. Research is like drilling for oil, in that one may go to a likely place and find nothing, but go to an unlikely place and find a lot. There is no "formula" or cookie cutter template to define research, just guidelines and advice. Each research journey is unique, which makes research like a journey to a new place, interesting and exciting. So go your own way and believe in what you do, and we hope the advice here helps your research.
Research is not a set of answers but a way of asking questions, a way of approaching "Truth" that humanity has evolved over hundreds of years. It is based on the premise that we don't know. While this may seem strange, since the aim of research is to know things, it is not knowing that creates knowing. While religion, art and politics may claim to know things about the world, not knowing is the foundation of good research. It follows that research is not a set of facts, but a way of finding out. If academic research was just "filling the knowledge bucket" surely we would have done it by now? We have not, and every year what we don't know increases faster than what we do know. Perhaps the reason is that knowledge interacts - one single new piece of new knowledge can change all the other pieces of knowledge that came before it.
For example Einstein's relativity changed all physics, because it changed our ideas of space and time, and space and time are contextual to all physics. Research then is not about adding to a static "pile" of knowledge, as one adds grains to a pile of sand, but it is a dynamic process that creates a new knowledge whole, as a baby that grows at each point into a new whole. Research methods are not about what "is", but about how to look at what is. The premise of not knowing leads us to conclude that research is asking the right questions in the right way to increase understanding.
Research is not a set of "right" answers but a way to rightly ask questions.
Research is a method, developed over centuries of human endeavour, to risk theories about the world against unbiased feedback from the world. To expect to predict and "manage" this process is folly:
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" (Albert Einstein)
Feyerabend argues that science is a human activity based on no common method, where people simply do "whatever it takes" to pursue knowledge. The research roadmap approach supports this, by saying equivalently that there is no right path into a wilderness, and that every journey is different. However this is not to say there are no guidelines at all, else every explorer would need to reinvent the wheel. Likewise that not all guidelines can be applied at once does not mean they have no value - many situations need a "golden mean" of many requirements, all of which are important, but equally not all of which can be met. A core guideline is that good research combines logical argument and physical data, as theory and practice work best together:
Theory alone gives imaginary theories and superstition
Data alone gives endless detail, confusion and despair
Research integrates abstract theory and concrete data
