Perceiving Knowledge Paradigms

Positivism and Realism Paradigm

Both of this paradigm pairs together their view of science in an objective way of finding out the nature of reality. Realism is derived from the Ontology philosophy where it believes that the reality exists out there somewhere in the universe and are waiting to be found out. On the other hand, Positivism seeks the reality through mathematical data and statistic. One just cannot understand the nature of reality just by believing on it as the truth, that is how positivism views the world. This paradigm sits in the area of Epistemology philosophy.

We discussed in the class where Positivism and Realism are the base paradigm of Classical Science. It is the way we approach science the old way which is with pure logic and understanding in finding the truth in reality. In an extreme view, it would be that the truth of reality can be uncovered through combination of mathematical equations and statistical data.

The Classical Science views basically covers all the fields with numerical data and logic based thinking in it. For example, informations and technology, civil engineering, chemistry and all sorts of other fields. All of these departments has the same approach to seeking their truth in their knowledge. They don’t use a subjective view in discovering meanings in their process for finding the truth, but it is through a systematic logical way of thinking based through solid and tangible evidence.

Interpretivism and Constructivism Paradigm

These paradigms is the fundamentals of a subjective perspective on the world. Constructivism is a common thing we see in the world where a democrative system is implemented. It is a constructed reality made by the agreement of the majority. We create the truth because everybody believes it is and it became the truth itself in the society, that is Constructivism. Interpretivism is the Epistemological view where in the process of finding the nature of reality, we interpret the collected data and compare it with statistical models of it. It is based on an individual’s view upon the topic to analyze the data and extract the knowledge of it.

Interpretivism and Constructivism would be the base idea of Social Science. We can easily identify the similarity between these paradigms perspective with fields of study such as anthropology, psychology, economics, comunication studies, etc. Most of these departments require communications with people and analyzing its actions if how it can be implemented within the knowledge. This is why we call it Social Science and include these paradigm in it. It needs a subjective view of the current situation and construct the knowledge from the interpreted data.

Nominalism and Anti-positivism Paradigm

These are paradigms that we rarely hear from time to time. But these paradigms actually corelate with the Realism and Positivism paradigm. It was confusing in every perspective you see it, but they are actually a complete opposite but still tightly connected. As it is said in a class I attended, these paradigms creates a view of the Arts where it can express their own reality through their self belief and understanding of their reality.

Nominalism paradigm, an Ontological view, is a believe where the truth of reality is discovered by your own as every person has reality of their own. You can see that Nominalism and Realism sees the that the reality is the truth, however, one sees that reality is out there and the other see that the reality is in each an every person.

Anti-positivism paradigm, as its name says, is the complete opposite of positivism. This paradigm perceive reality as something immeasurable, especially with numbers, and it has many ways that can be expressed from. Both Anti-positivism and positivism seeks to find the truth through discovering knowledge, but one uses their various interpretations and the other uses numbers and equations to find the nature of reality.

Design Based Research

Every categories mentioned above stand in the extreme position of its perspective. There is no right or wrong methods in the way research is conducted. However, there is one concept which is derived from the combination of all of these paradigm to establish a more wide perspective on a research. It is what we call the Design Science or Design Based Research.

It is a research process where we go through all of those paradigms one by one. It is an approach to search for knolwedge, to create something real and extracting knowledge out of those process from an interpreted process of analysis. By then, it is overall a series of actions full of creative approaches in its own.

Personally, I see this approach as an effective way and more concrete implementation of analysis in research. It relies only in creating what is tangible, something real and hopefully useful for the sake of society. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, it extracts those knowledge into a written documentation. This brings out researchers creative way of thinking in problem solving and therefore the final result is a creative creation.

Implemented Through Personal Experience

It was a mind-blowing experience. A spark of sudden realization suddenly hits me in a Research Method i attended. As you can see, the class disscusses about research paradigms and how it is implemented to science.

The first realization was the reflection levels. It starts from the highest point which is the Philosophy (Epistemology/Ontology), down to Paradigms, to Methodologies, Methods and lastly Tools. This is how different reflection levels is represented and it is parallel to several things in life.

As mentioned in the class, the Tools represent level 5 subjects which is basically honing your skills to use the tools. Going up is the Methods which represents level 6, then Methodologies on level 7, Paradigms on level 8 and Philosophy on level 9. This might be a rough representation but it has the same concept. Essentially, the higher the level of subject goes, the more abstract it gets.

Another sparks lit in the class was how Classic Science and Social Science is separated. In the class we disscussed that these 2 fields are total opposites and we often see students of them in a different or may be far away buildings in an institute. Not even mentioning about the Arts. They are different groups with different perspective and seperated geoographically (in a sense).

I implemented this idea to my university back in Indonesia. It covers the fields of Pharmacy, Engineering, Bio-engineering, Economics, Business, Psychology, Law and Arts. To my surprise, they are all grouped as what the paradigms concept views. Pharmacy, Engineering and Bio Engineering is grouped in one end of my university which is the Classical Science party. Next to them is the Economics and Business which implement the Social Science view. Seperated by a big library and administration building lies the Psychology and Law majors which is essentially a Social Science faction. The other end is the Arts in their own building and minding their own creativity there. I don’t know if this is an intentional design or it was just built that way, but the way i see it, everything there can be perceived in a philosphical way.

I finished my bachelor degree about 2 years ago. In Indonesia, we are obligated to create a thesis for bachelor degree. I made mine with no prior knowledge of this paradigm concepts. As I see it now, my thesis would be a random paradigms and methodologies selected and combined into something that makes sense, realistic and works. We are just given common choices of methodologies used for thesis to be used in our research.

Supposedly, I would have learned these philosophy and paradigms before I commence my research. The concept of Ontology and Epistemology was so unfamiliar to me. However as I read about it and goes to a lower level of reflections, everything makes more sense. It is essentially the foundation of how the research will be enacted. It will set a perspective from the researcher to tell their readers on how they will conduct the research and analysis.