Post-seminar reflection 3

During the week’s lecture Leif went deeper into the definition of theory and research. Thus, I learned that there’s a lot more to theory than the definition I tried explaining in the previous post. For instance, within the concept of theory one can find various definitions depending on which field in which it is implemented. Scientific theory is based on empirical data and is believed to be true until proven otherwise using more empirical data from scientific models approved by the scientific community. Philosophical theory, however, is basically theories which are based on the minds’ thoughts of a certain philosopher. For instance, the theory of epistemology as defined by Kant (discussed in theme 1) isn’t based on data acquired empirically, but rather the thoughts and argument laid out by Kant in his texts. The question I ask myself is whether or not this is a better/more objective view of theory than that of the sciences. At least with the Kant version of theory we don’t fool ourselves that there’s some objective truth to what is stated, as it is with scientific theories. However, perhaps humanity wouldn’t be able to develop technical gadgets and revolutionary objects had we not perceived scientific theory as truth until proven otherwise. This doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with Sutton & Staw or Gregor’s definition, described in my previous post, on that theory is for e.g the answers to the question of why or contemplation - but rather that there exists another layer as to what theory means for different areas of application. A notion that was eye-opening which was discussed during both the lecture and seminar, in association with this fact, was that us at KTH are squeezed through the mold which is scientific theory - and we therefore don’t even consider theory as something which could be of any other form than based on empirical data.

Difference between theory and hypothesis was something which was discussed greatly during the seminar. Even though I previously had an idea of what defined the two concepts, seeing as I’ve used them when writing the KEx-essay, it turned out it was a lot harder to define that I had assumed. The definition discussed was that hypothesis is ideas (often based on theory) that can be tested through some theoretic framework. For instance, the Big Bang theory could be tested from the hypothetical notion that an explosion forces objects to continuously spread out over space and time, and that there was a Big Bang since this means that the theory of the universe’s continuous expansion is explained. Furthermore, based on what is written in the texts that theory is hard (if not impossible) to generalize over different application, our concept of theory is basically personal and can will differ dependent on which area of application we use.