random memo about research, very random
Always follow this simple process to formulate research and thought:
1. To forge an argument after certain amount of research (tentative, provisional, intuitive, whatever). A good argument means to explain or illuminate things in an effective and comprehensive way.
2. To get on proving or testing that the premises of this argument are true in the most obvious and informative way through the analysis and interpretation of evidences, in order to justify that the conclusion is a likely-to-be-true inductive argument. If not so, go back to re-research and to re-formulate ideas.
In this way the story in historical research will have a sound empirical proof as its basis and falsifiable reasoning. A comprehensive master of evidences matters. A pure interpretation with rich imagination of the author, rested on very limited amount of resources regardless its entire nature in historical conditions and the intention of their agencies, is very dangerous. This is partly because, In so doing, the goal of research would be mostly enriching the meaning of resources based on ahistorical categories, rather than claiming on the right historical reasoning which has its goal as to guarantee the right results. Besides, resources used in this way could be hardly taken as historical evidences at all; they become the sites for contemplating with various grounds and biographical values.
I am not saying this must be wrong; I am saying this should not be taken as the goal of historical research. A society would pay great price for letting historians work as proving some "metaphysical-normative truth" through accommodating this "truth" into these sites for being contemplated. History cannot be reduced to a pure practice of cultural/literary anthropological interpretation at all. It has to be falsifiable, and it has true political and philosophical significances.
1. To forge an argument after certain amount of research (tentative, provisional, intuitive, whatever). A good argument means to explain or illuminate things in an effective and comprehensive way.
2. To get on proving or testing that the premises of this argument are true in the most obvious and informative way through the analysis and interpretation of evidences, in order to justify that the conclusion is a likely-to-be-true inductive argument. If not so, go back to re-research and to re-formulate ideas.
In this way the story in historical research will have a sound empirical proof as its basis and falsifiable reasoning. A comprehensive master of evidences matters. A pure interpretation with rich imagination of the author, rested on very limited amount of resources regardless its entire nature in historical conditions and the intention of their agencies, is very dangerous. This is partly because, In so doing, the goal of research would be mostly enriching the meaning of resources based on ahistorical categories, rather than claiming on the right historical reasoning which has its goal as to guarantee the right results. Besides, resources used in this way could be hardly taken as historical evidences at all; they become the sites for contemplating with various grounds and biographical values.
I am not saying this must be wrong; I am saying this should not be taken as the goal of historical research. A society would pay great price for letting historians work as proving some "metaphysical-normative truth" through accommodating this "truth" into these sites for being contemplated. History cannot be reduced to a pure practice of cultural/literary anthropological interpretation at all. It has to be falsifiable, and it has true political and philosophical significances.
