Analysis & Synthesis

The Process

The Inquiry Domain is about the human production and valuation of knowledge. This knowledge purports to represent the reality of a part of the universe that has captured our interest. In evolutionary terms, interest was in the service of personal survival and drove personal action: see Levels of Will.

The human vehicle for inquiry involves analysis + synthesis
i.e. we must somehow:

•take reality apart,
•capture its features,
and then
•put those features together in some form of coherent usable representation.

Analysis, i.e. taking apart, has two components: identifying the parts and distinguishing them from other identified entities and also from the background totality of the universe.

Analysis can be termed rigorous or considered if there is reason for confidence that these processes have been conducted in a thoughtful and careful manner. It is not possible to ask for more than that.

Measurement is recognized as the enabler of extremely precise description, but it is not as basic to science as commonly claimed. The notion of measuring immediately opens the question of what is being measured—which is surely part of the more fundamental need to identify and distinguish.

Synthesis, i.e. putting together, also has two components: organizing and integrating. Organizing shows how the parts fit into a whole—which in THEE usually means a hierarchy—and demonstrating that this whole has properties that are distinct from and more than just the sum of its parts. Integrating then places that whole within a larger context.

Getting Started

Inquiry is the Domain of psychosocial function that naturally sits above Action-RL1 and provides it with guidance. Without information or knowledge generated by inquiry, a course of action is liable to be inefficient and mishandled. So achievement will be limited.

As shown in the THEE Path, there is nothing intrinsic to inquiry within the elemental Root Level that is not also within the Primary Hierarchy (and vice versa).

In this first section, I must identify and clarify the irreducible elements present in any inquiry. So this analysis of inquiry-PH2 must reveal both the analytic and synthetic entities left unnamed in the Table at right.

As usual, I will establish the basic entities for Inquiry-PH2 as shown in the box by proposing:

• their functions;
• their properties; &
• their interrelations.

I start with the position that the foundation on which everything in inquiry must be built are observations i.e. sensorily-driven acquisition of data. Observations are deliberately made and registered so as to ultimately generate knowledge.

I start with the position that the foundation on which everything in inquiry must be built is the sensorily-driven acquisition of data. By deliberately collecting data, knowledge can ultimately be developed.

Note Name Revision: This level was originally termed observation, but observation assumes knowledge of what is being observed. Data does not make this assumption. Data is data. You cannot take for granted that it correlates with reality or a particular concept as you may hope or assume. Observation constrains data by using concepts and is located in the Structural Hierarchy at G2¹.

If there is a reality out there, then collecting data seems to be the unavoidable analytic means. As such, it gets located at Level-1. Data is obtained without necessarily knowing what it means.

PH2: INQUIRY
Primary Hierarchy
L7: ?
L6: ?
L5: ?
L4: ?
L3: ?
L2: ?
L1: Data

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• See an the list of elements in advance.
• Start now with Data-L1.

Originally posted: 23-Aug-2015.