How Knowledge Is Made
Recall from Chapter 3 the Burkean parlor metaphor that describes texts as never-ending conversations and interactions between writers and readers. The following passages, adapted from the eBook Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide, describe how through such textual conversations among academic discourse communities knowledge is made.
It is important to treat research, writing, and every occasion for these activities as opportunities to participate in the ongoing conversation of people interested in the same topics and questions that interest you.
Our knowledge about our world is shaped by the best and most up-to-date theories available to us. Sometimes hypotheses for these theories can be experimentally tested and proven, and sometimes, when obtaining such proof is impossible, they are based on consensus reached as a result of conversation and debate. Even the hypotheses that can be experimentally tested (for example in the sciences) do not become accepted knowledge until most members of the scientific community accept them. Other members of this community will help them test their hypotheses to develop theories, give them feedback on their writing, and keep them searching for the best answers to their questions. As Burke says the interaction between the members of intellectual communities never ends. No piece of writing, no argument, no theory or discovery is ever final. Instead, they all are subject to discussion, questioning, and improvement.
TRY THIS to understand theories. Watch this video and respond to the following questions. What is a theory? What is a hypothesis? What is the relationship between the two? While this video focuses on science, these concepts do apply in other academic subjects in different ways using various terms. Can you think of how theories work in disciplines like English literature or history? What about workplace or personal contexts?
Read in more detail about a specific theory of knowledge-making by Thomas Kuhn in Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide.
Fact and Opinion
The following passages adapted from Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide correct the common misperception of the terms “fact” and “opinion.”
The popular perception of the terms “fact” and “opinion” is that they are complete opposites. According to this view, facts can be verified by empirical, or experimental methods, while opinions are usually purely personal and cannot be verified or proven since they vary from one person to another. Another perception is that facts are also objective while opinions are subjective. These ways of thinking about facts and opinions are especially popular among beginning writers and researchers. Students often think that research projects are supposed to be completely objective because they are based on facts, and that creative writing is subjective because it is based on opinion. Moreover, such student writers say, it is impossible to argue with facts, but it is almost equally impossible to argue with opinions since every person is entitled to one and since we can’t really tell anyone that their opinions are wrong.
In college writing, such a theory of fact and opinion has very tangible consequences. It often results in writing in which the author is either too afraid to commit to a theory or points of view because he or she is afraid of being labeled subjective or biased. Consequently, such writers create little more than summaries of available sources. Other inexperienced writers may take the opposite route, writing exclusively or almost exclusively from their current understanding of their topics, or from their current opinions. Since “everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” they reason, no one can question what they have written even if that writing is completely unpersuasive. In either case, such writing fails to fulfill the main purpose of research, which is to learn.
What later becomes an accepted theory in an academic discipline begins as someone’s opinion. Enough people have to be persuaded by a theory in order for it to approach the status of accepted knowledge. All theories are subject to revision and change, and who is to say some time down the road, a better research paradigm will not be invented that would overturn what we now consider a solid fact. Thus, research and the making of knowledge are not only social processes but also rhetorical ones. Change in human understanding of difficult problems and issues takes place over time. By researching those problems and issues and by discussing what they find with others, writers advance their community’s understanding and knowledge.
Read more about fact and opinion, specifically the rhetoric of information, in Open English @ SLCC.