Method against method: swarm and interdisciplinary research methodology

Abstract

Part of a special issue on ‘swarm methodology,’ this paper, written by a swarm participant, reflects upon the purpose and value of this kind of interdisciplinary research methodology. First, by way of a recognition of the interdisciplinary status of this paper itself, the question of what we hope to accomplish when we engage in conversations across disciplinary boundaries is broached. Second, a discussion of the practice of peer-review provides an approximate view of one paradigmatic understanding of how we produce a ‘conversation’ within a given established research methodology. We are then, third, able to consider a number of possible related ways in which we might understand the value of a conversation between research methodologies. Finally, the common intuition that there is a concrete value specifically within a ‘holistic’ or ‘synergistic approach’ is addressed, and the swarm methodology put forth as a likely place for such a value to emerge, if it is to emerge anywhere.

Keywords:

• swarm
• methodology
• interdisciplinary
• Consumer Electronics Show

Notes

1. ‘Life presents itself chiefly as a task – the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won – of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden’ (Schopenhauer, 2004 [1892]).

2. I hasten to add that I am not meaning to assert or imply any kind of relativistic notion of truth in this depiction of methodological selection. I mean to say only that some approaches will produce a ‘clearer picture’ of some things than others – this does not imply that this ‘picture,’ though ‘clearer’ or ‘higher contrast,’ might not be ill-founded, politically harmful, or otherwise bad or wrong. The point here is merely that they are rivalrous, and rivalry does not imply equivalence.

3. I mean ‘of a kind’ in a loose sense here. In this use of terminology, I hope to make my argument more apparent to a wider audience, even though it does a certain amount of conceptual violence to certain technical uses of these terms. While, e.g. the Kuhnian will claim that the rivalrous aspect of different paradigms consists in part in their incommensurability, the Kuhnian will nonetheless concede that the fact that this incommensurability is an issue for these rivalrous paradigms indicates that they are of a kind in a larger sense. So, Einsteinian physics is of a kind with Newtonian physics in a sense, for Einsteinian physics is concerned with objects of inquiry sufficiently similar to those of Newtonian physics to force a choice between them. By comparison, Einsteinian physics is not in such a close relation to phlogiston theory, Freudian psychology, or French cooking. To adapt this to Gestalt perception, the duck and the rabbit in the famous ‘duck-rabbit’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 194) are of a kind in this larger sense – in that their very mutual exclusivity results from shared constituent elements, even if those constituent elements appear under differing categories (e.g. pendulum vs constrained falling; duck vs rabbit) in each.

4. From here forward, in keeping with the recognition of these inter- and intradisciplinary boundaries of varying strengths, I will be speaking of methodologies and research programs rather than of disciplinary norms or disciplinary objects of study. In doing so, I will also be trying to navigate between various perspectives in the philosophy of science. I intend the following argument to be applicable regardless of how one divides up the fundamental organizational units of scientific practice. In speaking variously of methodologies, research programs, paradigms, and theoretical perspectives, I am trying to make an argument that will avoid siding with e.g. Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc. In the end, however, the attempt to negotiate between these views may be a prefiguring of my eventual view, which is closer to Feyerabend than the rest, at least insofar as the epistemic value of what is usually called ‘interdisciplinarity’ is concerned. Most of these views, most of the time, are really viewed as being about the so-called ‘hard’ sciences anyhow, so my taking some liberties in skirting around their debates will, I hope, be more easily forgiven than it might otherwise.

5. This example, it should be noted, is unusual due to our prejudice towards attributing more importance to audio than visual in this case. Whatever the matter of fact may be, however, we tend to claim that appearance ought not to be terribly relevant to political office.