Christopher R. Matthews

@drcrmatthews.bsky.social

4389 Followers 3480 Following

▪︎ Reading, writing & thinking about the moral foundation of scholarship ▪︎ Author of Doing Good Social Science: http://bit.ly/3EgFA2z ▪︎ More about my work: immersiveresearch.co.uk ▪︎ DM for speaking/workshop requests

Hope and Education by David halpin
This is chapter 8 of my latest book where I discuss the need to rethink theory
This is chapter 5 from my latest book. I mark mark out why social science cant be messy and still be considered adequate
The constant fire by adam frank
Abstract This essay takes aim at normal academic practice in interpretative analysis. Specifically, the ways methodological discussions are often stilted, wooden and don’t sufficiently attempt to trace the intellectual journeys which scholars have traveled to arrive at their understandings. Based on this I consider some of the epistemological under-laboring that sits at the foundation of social scientific analysis of much qualitative data. With a sound understanding of what it means to understand, we can grasp something of the “rational shadow” that is often cast over the realities of human knowledge production. That is because, while we scholars might organize our time so that we can have a moment when we are “doing our analysis,” such a moment, when understood as a bounded, linear and rational event or series of progressive steps, is an epistemological fiction. It is, then, more rational to acknowledge the diffuse, tacit, and non-rational features of human understanding, and build methodological and analytic strategies which lean into these realities. And, in that regard, we can provide a more rational analysis of our relatively rational analysis. Keywords interpretative analysis, research philosophy, understanding, epistemology, knowledge
All methods of gaining knowledge are epistemologically fallible. That is, when we attempt to understand something, we must use concepts, theories, models, and ideas, which are historically, politically and culturally shaped. This process relies on socially produced and imperfect languages that are all pulled together by/via a metaphysical phenomenon – housed within a squishy and bony biological body – that we do not, and perhaps never will, fully comprehend: human consciousness. And, as such, our knowingness is always inherently context dependent and necessarily incomplete. There is, and never can be, a perfect ‘one for one’ relationship between our ideas about an object of study and that object. While it might be tempting, especially in a discipline like physics with its relatively high degree of statistical accuracy, to miss or underplay this inherent separation, ‘the notion of producing perfect knowledge is a myth – and most scientists will happily acknowledge this as a foundational principle of their work’ (Matthews 2024, p. 10).
Book chapter - Knowing Stuff - myths, science & reality
The sun rising in a clear sky over a frosty view of beeston weir.