by George Brosi

The purpose of academic work is to learn about the world, to move from ignorance to knowledge to understanding. This really is a three-stage process. Before learning takes place, we are ignorant; then we first ask and then answer the questions, who, what, where and when. These answers give us some knowledge, an overview of the situation, but still not understanding. As we attempt to answer the more difficult questions of how and why, we being to achieve understanding.

It is clear that we learn by asking questions. When I take my car into my mechanic, he asks himself, "What is wrong with this car?" Then, when that is clarified, he asks, "Why?" He gets nowhere until he comes up with some kind of tentative answer to that question, an educated guess or diagnosis. Then he proceeds to try to confirm or disprove his tentative diagnosis. If all the information confirms his diagnosis, he can fix the car. If, on the other hand, evidence he gathers disproves his initial diagnosis, he has to come up with an alternative diagnosis and pursue it. The same process occurs when I take any of my children to the doctor. She asks herself what is wrong with the child and proceeds to try to confirm or disprove her tentative diagnosis.

Scientists, including social scientists, do essentially the same thing to achieve scientific understanding. They start with a question that needs an answer. Then an hypothesis, or educated guess, is formulated to answer that question. Then experiments are devised to isolate the important variables, control all but one of them and determine how that one variable affects the rest.

Scholars in the humanities do essentially the same thing. In English we do not use the word, "diagnosis" or "hypothesis." We call our educated guess our thesis.

Note that in society when we need to answer an important question like "Who stole that car?" or "Who killed that kid?" we set up a trial and allow two lawyers to argue each side. We feel that by each of them taking an opposite thesis about the blame and arguing it out, society is most likely the get the question answered.

So, there are three basic steps to doing a research paper. First we have to ask a research question. Then we have to come up with a thesis which answers that question, and then we have to argue for or support our thesis.

In short, scholars learn by arguing fairly among themselves in a way that illuminates both why and how our world works.