The Assumptions Behind Every Research Question

Every research question builds from assumptions. No research question exists without them. However, not all assumptions are apparent. Much less are they visible. Then how do they ground the research question?

The assumptions behind every research question appear in diverse shades and intensities of appearance. Take the case of rationality. Every research question clearly assumes the researcher will proceed rationally in both formulating the problem, deriving the question, and acting upon it through a commitment to producing knowledge of scientific quality.

What does it mean, though, to even tacitly admit as much when both the idea of rationality and science are themselves objects of questioning and contestation?

Consider rationality again and its modeling in the notion of reason. Depending on the civilizational timeline with which they are identified, rationality and reason carry fluctuating assumptions of their own. The most important for rationality is that those who manifest it find constitutional protection to do so. Yes, constitutional protection. Freedom of thought and freedom of research are fundamental human rights that might often be taken for granted. Given the nature of research itself, it would be foolhardy to believe the fullest quality and refinement of a research project can be reached without an extensive and protected right to inquire.

Knowledge that circulates and educates can make the world a better place. When it does, it equates to ethical performance.

Clearly, this assumption reflects only the basis, the foothold, and the launching pad of doing research. Its pre-existence made explicit does ensure how any further engagement will at least be attainable as an ideal in research. Freedom to explore, problematize, and critique are the general and dynamic drivers in relation to which the refining of further assumptions proceeds.

A Turn to Preconditions

Within European societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this right was by no means recognized. That is why the German philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted that for humans to exercise their freedom, they should be compelled to use their rational faculties in the public forum. In his view, publicly acting upon reason defines the spirit of Aufklärung, or Enlightenment, a significant shift in European mentality for the practice of the sciences.

Every research question summarizes and contains in nuce—in compact space—the history of arriving at any research question. The definition one holds of science sets another assumption to research questions. The matter is as historical and ethical as the public use of reason is rational. From this conviction, the next step follows logically. As G. Hegel asserted, the real is rational, because the rational is real.

Science began millennia ago, though it was not called science. At least in territories where Greek was the language spoken, "philosophy" once denoted what is understood to be science today. Such history, once again, is contained as a memory trace within each research question. Another working assumption.

Conceptual reasoning may not forward a single definition of thought, but most of its expressions converge on attributing introspection to experience. The question of what sparks the desire to know does not have a single answer. Nowadays, different research cultures may find comfort in explanations that diverge. In the past, however, a belief held to the conviction that a single meaning equated necessarily to what was understood as a good meaning.

Rigor cannot merely push what we learn in professional experience toward the margins of research. The path to research spreads according to interlinking trails, shifting cardinalities. Its contours respect in writing and equations the parameters given by our predecessors.

The first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics alerts readers to a fundamental assumption: “all humans desire to know”. A trained reader will identify this sentence as a claim needing to be demonstrated. So often, leading lines in books are removed from the context of demonstration, turned into commonplace opinion or dogma. Doubtless the source for famous leading lines comes from observation in different walks of life, whether motivated by empiricism, rationalism, or transcendental critique. Sources drawn from a distinct past. In research, there is no use in reinventing the wheel.

If knowing partly involves first setting the path toward understanding, then one can spot a glimmer of Aristotle's teachings in his former pupil, Alexander of Macedonia. The latter infamously chose to leave behind the tedious lessons of his master, by which to untie a Gordian knot with agility, opting instead to brutally slice it. From the research perspective, let the emphasis here be placed on deciding or selecting, instead of slicing.

The Sharpness of Theoretically Postulating

Centuries of debate have centered on how this act diverges from conceptual training. Then in the nineteenth century, the slice and the cut became key tools in mathematics and in the social sciences. Aristotle, whose family was close to the central power of Macedonia, had identified at least one bridge linking professional experience to research. Breaking with Plato offered him a vast space of nature to gather knowledge and into which to inquire. His principle followed the drive of classifying.

The cut in mathematics refers to a technique by which to determine how infinity exceeds a single size. As for its use in the social sciences and philosophy, the cut derives from a break in the scientific configuration dominating in a given time period. Its application marks the origins of the philosophy of science. Decades later, the American physicist and historian Thomas Kuhn would use it to effect in the catchphrase "paradigm shift."

Used as a call for practice of every sort conceivable through marketing, Kuhn’s notion acts in context as a more or less exact theoretical model by which to map the pattern of major change. And major change is rare. It has to be. Too many careers are at stake. Too many convictions and just as many truths.

In scientific practice, communities form through networks and success. Credibility reinforces stability. It is good for financing and necessary in the race for patents. As anomalies inevitably emerge in the activities of everyday scientific practice, specialists leap to contain their contagion. Normalized and institutionalized scientific practice works with theories internally, as in a puzzle-solving challenge. Then an anomaly arises. Uncontained, it can take on attractive power until one becomes critical. A break can occur then. And it can unfold into a shift opening onto the terrain of the new.

An assumption found in a bold research question is how truth can lead to novel results. But an assumption is not a truth. When truth is involved, falsification as well as validation turn out to be crucial acts to undertake.

Whether it be through a shift, cut, or break, theoretical thinking emerges by means of an interruption in the flow of daily activities related to one’s profession. Even scientific practice follows deadlines in financing, aims for the key moment in a patent application, and attends to production schedules. After earning a PhD or doctorate, a professional flow can wash over what was offered as an innovation, as in a counter-current.

Between the before and after, research appears as an interruption. Its projection encounters a moment of self-determined suspension. In these gaps, the nature of the assumptions to a question can often acquire more significance than the question itself.

From Marble, Ending in Concrete

Then the text begins to speak. A question takes shape as an engine. Few assumptions tend to imply multiple consequences. Even an imperfect question does.

It is time to bring the spread to a halt. The field has been chiseled out from marble.

Its image is still too close to intuition. Delving into the bibliography is the next step. The bibliography is the base, solid as concrete.