Without ever meaning to, I’ve managed to collect a fairly large number of theoretical books with “method” in their titles: After Method, Beyond Method, Against Method, For and Against Method, Truth and Method.
What is interesting about all these books is that they equate method with algorithmic techniques for capturing, analyzing and evaluating data. And they seem to either ignore or underplay the non-algorithmic principles of practice. They seem to be in battle with vestiges of a modernism that has lost much of its predominance in the last decade. They’re all beginning to feel as historically situated as they almost unanimously admit they are.
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Having just been through a project with too little method, I have to admit that I prefer having a little too much method to having not enough.
But I’m becoming sensitive to the fact that this is not a uni-dimensional continuum. Method is a complex set of practices of different kinds. “Too much” usually means imposition of unhelpful algorithms, where “too little” means having insufficient heuristic guidance (to use Roger Martin’s deeply flawed but nevertheless hugely useful “knowledge funnel” framework. And the flaw is assuming 1) the knowledge autonomously “evolves” from heuristic to algorithm, when in fact these are separate dimensions of practice, and 2) that algorithm is always, or even usually, more desirable than heuristic.)
A good list I should review now and again. Another aspect of method is from Greenwald’s – “There Is Nothing So Theoretical as a Good Method. He draws the idea that theory and method exist as a dialectic. I would add that in the social sciences, a new method often takes the form of a new measurement process.
I find those vestiges of a modernism problematic because they are often so strong in people’s implicit cognition. No one says they are a positivist / empiricist, but their implicit ways of thinking seem grounded in modernism. My interest in design has been a search for new ways of thinking that incorporates the old ways but moves beyond. Think I should read that Gadamer book again.
Howard, I downloaded the article and it looks interesting and highly relevant. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Speaking of methods, have you seen IDEO’s Design Thinking for Teachers? http://designthinkingforeducators.com/
Howard, great paper. Thanks for pointing it out. Have you read Leviathan and the Air-Pump? It seems like Greenwald has entered ANT territory.
I’m curious how familiar the author is with hermeneutics and the role of Hermes in Greek myth. “Perhaps researchers who were active during the peaks of at least some of those controversies might consider collaborating on reports to describe the current state of their controversy. These collaborations might start by identifying empirical results that are accepted by all parties to the controversy. This could provide a path to discovering resolutions of the boundary-drawing or intertranslation variety.” — Hermes is the god responsible for boundaries, translations and (in his role as psychopomp) navigation of souls through the netherworld.