by George Brosi

The reason that so much is known today about the world and the universe is that scholars have built upon the work of those who have asked and answered questions in the past. Instead of starting the process of inquiry over and over again, scholars have first learned what others have learned and then tried to delve even deeper into the questions which perplex them. Thus scholarship is a cumulative process.

In the sciences and social sciences, much has been learned by experimentation, a process which tries to control all factors which affect a situation, called variables because they are seldom completely static, and manipulate one to see how it really behaves. The results of this kind of inquiry are published in scientific journals which are indexed and made available in major research libraries. Before scholars begin an experiment, they look up their research question in these journals and find out what experiments have already been done on that question. Then they devise an experiment which will carry the inquiry one step further. Every journal article about an experiment begins with a "review of research" section which puts the new experiment in the context of previous experiments. Thus experimenters are building on the work of their predecessors. Scientists would not consider doing any experimental work without acknowledging the work that has gone on before them and trying to fit their work into the ongoing process.

Once experiments have been done, other scholars become familiar with the results of many experiments and advance theories which explain why the results of the experiments turned out the way they did. These scholars do not do any controlled experiments, but they read as much as they can about the experiments which have been done and attempt to come up with an hypothesis or thesis which yields understanding of the questions asked.

There are thus two kinds of research: experimental research which takes place in the field or in a laboratory and academic research which begins in a research library drawing conclusions from previous studies which have been made. Both build on the work of earlier scholars.

In this class we will be doing academic research, drawing upon library resources. Like those who do experimental research, we need to start with a survey of the previous work done on our research question. We need to acknowledge the contribution of those who came before us, build on what has been done before we begin and do our work in such a way as to make the work of those who come after us easier and more fruitful. We are part of an on-going community of scholars.