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What, When, Where, How, Who? Research Introduction, Important Definitions and Related Concepts: Research is a human activity based on intellectual investigation and is aimed at discovering, interpreting, and revising human knowledge on different aspects of the world. Research can use the scientific method, but need not do so. Scientific research relies on the application of the scientific method, a harnessing of curiosity. This research provides scientific information and theories for the explanation of the nature and the properties of the world around us. It makes practical applications possible. Scientific research is funded by public authorities, by charitable organisations and by private groups, including many companies. Scientific research can be subdivided into different classifications. Historical research is embodied in the historical method. The term research is also used to describe an entire collection of information about a particular subject. An intellectual is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate, or ask and answer questions about a wide variety of different ideas. There are, broadly, three modern definitions at work in discussions about intellectuals. First, “intellectuals” as those deeply involved in ideas, books, and the life of the mind. Second, “intellectuals” as a recognizable occupational class consisting of lecturers, professors, lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, etc. Third, “cultural intellectuals” are those of notable expertise in culture and the arts, expertise which allows them some cultural authority, which they then use to speak in public on other matters. Discovery observations form acts of detecting and learning something. Discovery observations are acts in which something is found and given a productive insight. Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. New discoveries are acquired through various senses and are usually assimiliated with preexisting knowledge and actions. Questioning is a major form of human thought and interpersonal communication, and plays a key role in discovery. Discoveries are acquired through questions. With reference to science and academic disciplines, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing new reasoning to explain the knowledge gathered through such observations with previously acquired knowledge from abstract thought and everyday experience. In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of research (the other two being description and explanation). Discovery is made by providing observational evidence and attempts to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon. Some observational discoveries lead to invention of object, process, or techniques. A discovery may sometimes be based on earlier discoveries, collaborations or ideas, and the process of discovery requires at least the awareness that an existing concept or method can be modified or transformed. However, some discoveries also represent a radical breakthrough in knowledge. Language interpreting or interpretation is the intellectual activity of facilitating oral and sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between two, or among three or more, speakers who neither speak nor sign the same source language. Functionally, interpreting and interpretation are the descriptive words for the activity; in professional practice interpreting denotes spoken language, while interpretation denotes translation studies work. This important distinction is observed to avoid confusion between the interpreter and the client. Functionally, an interpreter orally converts a source language to a target language; likewise in sign language. The interpreter's function is conveying every semantic element (tone and register) and every intention and feeling of the message that the source-language speaker is directing to the target-language listeners. Knowledge is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) variously as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories. Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose if appropriate. Scientific method refers to the body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.[2] Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, identifiable features distinguish scientific inquiry from other methodologies of knowledge. Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to predict dependably any future results. Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many hypotheses together in a coherent structure. This in turn may help form new hypotheses or place groups of hypotheses into context. Curiosity is an emotion that causes natural inquisitive behaviour such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in many animal and human species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself being caused by the emotion of curiosity. Although curiosity is an innate capability of many living beings, it cannot be subsumed under category of instinct because it lacks the quality of fixed action pattern; it is rather one of innate basic emotions because it can be expressed in many flexible ways while instinct is always expressed in a fixed way, and like any innate capability it confers a survival advantage to certain species, and can be found in their genomes. Nature (from the Latin word natura, in turn from the Greek φύσις) refers to the phenomena of the physical universe and life, often referring more specifically to organic life and natural phenomena on Earth. Human activity is rarely considered natural unless qualified in ways such as "human nature" or "the whole of nature". Conversely, "nature" may refer to the "natural environment" or wilderness, meaning areas of Earth which have not been substantially altered by human intervention. In modern philosophy, mathematics, and logic, a property is an attribute of an object; thus a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. Properties are therefore subject to the Russell's paradox/Grelling-Nelson paradox. It differs from the logical concept of class by not having any concept of extensionality, and from the philosophical concept of class in that a property is considered to be distinct from the objects which possess it. In classical Aristotelian terminology, a property (proprium) is one of the Predicables. It is a non-essential quality of a species (like an accident), but a quality which is nevertheless characteristically present in members of that species (and in no others). For example, "ability to laugh" may be considered a special characteristic of human beings. However, "laughter" is not an essential quality of the species human, whose Aristotelian definition of "rational animal" does not require laughter. Thus, in the classical framework, properties are characteristic, but non-essential, qualities. The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence, such as secondary sources and tertiary sources, to research and then to write history. The question of the nature, and indeed the possibility, of sound historical method is raised in the philosophy of history, as a question of epistemology. The following summarizes the history guidelines commonly used by historians in their work, under the headings of external criticism, internal criticism, and synthesis. Garraghan divides criticism into six inquiries [1]
"It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table."[1] Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology (or cognitive science), and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a sensory system dedicated to each sense. There is no firm agreement among neurologists as to the number of senses because of differing definitions of what constitutes a sense. One definition states that an exteroceptive sense is a faculty by which outside stimuli are perceived.[1] The conventional five senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste: a classification traditionally attributed to Aristotle.[2] However, humans have at least nine different senses (including interoceptive senses), like: thermoception (heat, cold), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance, gravity), proprioception & kinesthesia (joint motion and acceleration) and sense of time. Different senses also exist in other organisms (amongst them: electroreception, echolocation, magnetoception, pressure detection, polarized light detection). In philosophy, action has developed into a sub-field called philosophy of action. Action is what an agent can do. For example, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent. On the other hand, catching a cold is not considered an action because it is something which happens to a person, not something done by one. Generally an agent doesn't intend to catch a cold or engage in bodily movement to do so (though we might be able to conceive of such a case). Other events are less clearly defined as actions or not. For instance, distractedly drumming ones fingers on the table seems to fall somewhere in the middle. Deciding to do something might be considered a mental action by some. However, others think it is not an action unless the decision is carried out. Unsuccessfully trying to do something might also not be considered an action for similar reasons (for e.g. lack of bodily movement). It is contentions whether Believing, intending, and thinking are actions since they are mental events. A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information is provided with an answer. Questions are normally put or asked using interrogative sentences. But they can also be put by imperative sentences, which normally express commands: "Tell me what 2 + 2 is"; conversely, some expressions, such as "Would you pass the butter?", have the grammatical form of questions but actually function as requests for action, not for answers. (A phrase such as this could, theoretically, also be viewed not merely as a request but as an observation of the other person's desire to comply with the request given.) An invention is a form, a composition of matter, or a process that has an element of novelty. Some inventions are based on pre-existing forms, compositions, processes or ideas. Other inventions are radical breakthroughs which may extend the boundaries of human knowledge or experience. An invention that is novel and not obvious to those who are skilled in the same field may be able to obtain the legal protection of a patent. Invention can come about in many ways. Invention can be seeing a new possibility and pursuing it. Invention is often arises from trying to solve a problem. As the saying goes, necessity may be the mother of invention. An invention may come about from the desire for a composition or a method that realizes a purpose in a faster, more efficient, easier, cheaper, more ecologically friendly, aesthetically novel, or otherwise different way. Or an invention may be a composition or a process created to accomplish a new purpose. Invention can also begin by recognizing that an accident is useful or that it opens a new avenue for exploration. For example, the metallic color of plastic made by accidentally adding a thousand times too much catalyst led scientists to explore its metal-like properties, inventing electrically conductive plastic and light emitting plastic - invention that won the Nobel Prize in 2000 (see conductive polymer, and organic light-emitting diode or PLED). [1] A language is a system of visual, auditory, or tactile symbols of communication and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. Language is considered to be an exclusively human mode of communication; although other animals make use of quite sophisticated communicative systems, none of these are known to make use of all of the properties that linguists use to define language. A set of agreed-upon symbols is only one feature of written language; all languages must define the structural relationships between these symbols in a system of grammar. Rules of grammar are what distinguish language from other forms of communication. They allow a finite set of symbols to be manipulated to create a potentially infinite number of grammatical utterances. Translation is the action of interpretation of the meaning of a text, and subsequent production of an equivalent text, also called a translation, that communicates the same message in another language.
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