When we unthinkingly project a simplistic dichotomy of objectivity versus subjectivity on our life experiences, we make real insight much more difficult than it ought to be.

Obviously, a researcher doesn’t want to rely entirely on subjectivity. The entire purpose of research is to challenge our own subjective assumptions, prejudices and habitual interpretations with facts that help us to better ways of thinking.

But to counter the neglect or denial of reality with strict objectivity — that is to work exclusively with empirical observation and logical construction of conclusions — is not only unnecessary, it involves a denial of another kind of reality, and is perhaps just as damaging as reckless ignorant intuition.

Fact is, no matter how firmly we try to ground our theories in hard fact, the theories are not derived purely and exclusively from those facts. Something is always added, and it is only this addition that places the facts in meaningful relation. We are always intuiting patterns of some kind — often unconsciously — and these intuitions guide both our perceptions and our actions. To behave as if this is not happening is to turn a blind eye to precisely what we are trying to catch sight of.

The dialectical synthesis of these two extreme positions is to take from objectivity its attentive respect for reality, and to take from subjectivity its capacity to intuit patterns, and to combine them in a reciprocal process of informing one’s intuition, and then scrupulously testing one’s intuitions against observed reality.

The formula is “leap forward; scrutinize backwards.”

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One other thing that badly needs saying: Research is the disciplined pursuit of learning from people. The researcher sometimes must help research participants teach effectively. All the elaborate techniques researchers use in the field and in analysis must serve the purpose of effective teaching and learning. Unfortunately, often the techniques are used for the opposite purpose. Research can also be designed in a way that prevents certain kinds of learning — and this is roughly proportional to how structured the research is. Unstructured in-context interviews are limited only by what can be said and shown. A structured survey limits what can be said to A or B or C.

The same is true of workshop exercises. Highly structured exercises impose a pre-existent schema on what can be learned, and discourages and prevents the development of some possibilities.

The most sophisticated technique at the researcher’s disposal is conversation.

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Temple Grandin, despite her autism, has learned to interact with people. Her technique involves careful observation of behaviors, subsequent recognizing patterns, then responding to the patterns strategically. The responses are tested against the expected result. She interacts with human behavior as a physicist interacts with the behaviors of matter.

Most non-autistic people — “neurotypicals” as Grandin calls them — are equipped with an intuitive sense that guides us and makes it possible to interact without all the conscious observation and rational interpretation, and strategic response. We just know what to do, and do it. Of course, this can be taken to an extreme, and the glare of our innate sense of meaning can distract us from detecting clues pointing to other forms of meaning (such as those Grandin keyed into which helped her understand the experience of livestock in slaughterhouses).

Businesses tend to manage themselves in such a way as to make themselves collectively autistic. They blind, silence and paralyze intuition on principle — then try to add it back late in the process through marketing and advertising.