Research, schmesearch
Aug. 19th, 2007 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI'm having quite a good time reading the very long, very thoughtful comments here on the journal Making Light about research materials that are not to be trusted, but I admit to both cringing for myself and going *eh* as well at several points...
All that said, I still have to tear myself away from the long posts and get dressed for work. Because it's very cool to hear experts talk about their response to works in their field.
1) I'm not sure I always care if my research material is to be trusted, when all I'm using it for is to suggest ideas.
2) I'm not sure it always matters if one's first readings in an area are trustworthy, if you're going to iterate. I know I'll take a lot of flack on this if I ever do teach a class on researching (and as a librarian, I might) but I think the first round of research is meant for being interested. For having a good time, for being entranced by the material. For getting all giggly over weird facts. If later, the weird facts turn out not to be true, well, you're still interested. You're still creating this web in your mind that all the later, good facts can stick to. So cotton isn't actually little sheep growing on trees. It's still pretty fascinating that someone once described it that way, right? Or if no one ever described it that way, it's fascinating to me that it somehow ended up described that way in a Time-Life book on enchanted creatures that I read as a kid. The little pictures of the sheep-trees were funny and stuck in the mind, and suggested a certain view of nature. Ditto with old science on the humors and stuff. Is it so hard to see a continuity between a theory of humors and the science involved in SSRIs? I mean, both are talking about substances in your body that control mood/behavior and get out of whack. From a scientific and anatomical standpoint, way different. From a very abstract theoretical standpoint? Doesn't strike me as totally discontinuous.
3) If the reason a source is not to be trusted is because of the conclusions it draws, as opposed to the research it presents, I don't care a bit. The best old crotchety authors are always pretty up front with you about what their prejudices are, and you just go from there. I remember that Barrington Moore wrote something in one of his books about how one reason slavery and abuse kept happening was because it was an enduring source of human pleasure to bring misery to others, and one open to even the least developed people. Boom - his opinion on human nature right there, laid out for you, so you can account for that lens in all the next three pages of analysis.
4. The cringing for my own ignorance. In high school I read the Golden Bough, and I loved it. I read the White Goddess in high school too. I loved the Golden Bough, but I thought it was clear that he was copping out on his own analysis in the end, bowing to some popular pressure of the time. As for the White Goddess, I don't think anyone could take the book seriously - it's a lot of fun, but kinda the academic equivalent of the Da Vinci Code, and this was obvious to me even as a 16 year old. Then I read some random book called "The State" by some Marxist, and I wish I could remember who because it was really fun. I would never sit down I guess and try to write a scholarly paper on the development of world religions based on the Golden Bough, that makes sense. But it's wonderful source material for building systems of magical thought in a fantasy world, which is all I want it for.
Of course, I don't have any urge to write real historical novels, or to write academic nonfiction. So that may be why I'm like "eh." So much of the modern scholarship I've read in areas like political science trades scope for accuracy - who really wants to read 20 highly accurate articles on 2 month spans in one country when you can read a fun book written by a classically educated mind that's full of sweeping generalizations and betrays a cynical awareness of human nature? Sure it may be horribly inaccurate about every detail, but it might also be a lot more fun.
Also, I have to say that the older inaccurate books are often vitally necessary to understand the present state of the art. Because often weird dogmatic splits develop into a field based on different reactions to or revisions of a standout early work, and the reader who doesn't know that Author A and Author B are from different camps feuding over their interpretation of Great But Discredited Author Number One is really going to struggle with the material of both Author A and Author B. And I don't think it's actually possible to come to one's own analysis on Authors A and B without having oneself read Author One. That way, one can make one's own darned decision on whether one prefers to join the camps of Author A or Author B, rather than accepting the prejudice of one's teacher or graduate advisor or what have you.
2) I'm not sure it always matters if one's first readings in an area are trustworthy, if you're going to iterate. I know I'll take a lot of flack on this if I ever do teach a class on researching (and as a librarian, I might) but I think the first round of research is meant for being interested. For having a good time, for being entranced by the material. For getting all giggly over weird facts. If later, the weird facts turn out not to be true, well, you're still interested. You're still creating this web in your mind that all the later, good facts can stick to. So cotton isn't actually little sheep growing on trees. It's still pretty fascinating that someone once described it that way, right? Or if no one ever described it that way, it's fascinating to me that it somehow ended up described that way in a Time-Life book on enchanted creatures that I read as a kid. The little pictures of the sheep-trees were funny and stuck in the mind, and suggested a certain view of nature. Ditto with old science on the humors and stuff. Is it so hard to see a continuity between a theory of humors and the science involved in SSRIs? I mean, both are talking about substances in your body that control mood/behavior and get out of whack. From a scientific and anatomical standpoint, way different. From a very abstract theoretical standpoint? Doesn't strike me as totally discontinuous.
3) If the reason a source is not to be trusted is because of the conclusions it draws, as opposed to the research it presents, I don't care a bit. The best old crotchety authors are always pretty up front with you about what their prejudices are, and you just go from there. I remember that Barrington Moore wrote something in one of his books about how one reason slavery and abuse kept happening was because it was an enduring source of human pleasure to bring misery to others, and one open to even the least developed people. Boom - his opinion on human nature right there, laid out for you, so you can account for that lens in all the next three pages of analysis.
4. The cringing for my own ignorance. In high school I read the Golden Bough, and I loved it. I read the White Goddess in high school too. I loved the Golden Bough, but I thought it was clear that he was copping out on his own analysis in the end, bowing to some popular pressure of the time. As for the White Goddess, I don't think anyone could take the book seriously - it's a lot of fun, but kinda the academic equivalent of the Da Vinci Code, and this was obvious to me even as a 16 year old. Then I read some random book called "The State" by some Marxist, and I wish I could remember who because it was really fun. I would never sit down I guess and try to write a scholarly paper on the development of world religions based on the Golden Bough, that makes sense. But it's wonderful source material for building systems of magical thought in a fantasy world, which is all I want it for.
Of course, I don't have any urge to write real historical novels, or to write academic nonfiction. So that may be why I'm like "eh." So much of the modern scholarship I've read in areas like political science trades scope for accuracy - who really wants to read 20 highly accurate articles on 2 month spans in one country when you can read a fun book written by a classically educated mind that's full of sweeping generalizations and betrays a cynical awareness of human nature? Sure it may be horribly inaccurate about every detail, but it might also be a lot more fun.
Also, I have to say that the older inaccurate books are often vitally necessary to understand the present state of the art. Because often weird dogmatic splits develop into a field based on different reactions to or revisions of a standout early work, and the reader who doesn't know that Author A and Author B are from different camps feuding over their interpretation of Great But Discredited Author Number One is really going to struggle with the material of both Author A and Author B. And I don't think it's actually possible to come to one's own analysis on Authors A and B without having oneself read Author One. That way, one can make one's own darned decision on whether one prefers to join the camps of Author A or Author B, rather than accepting the prejudice of one's teacher or graduate advisor or what have you.
All that said, I still have to tear myself away from the long posts and get dressed for work. Because it's very cool to hear experts talk about their response to works in their field.
