Final commentary

Final blog post and course reflection

In this final blog post, I will try to echo the various ways we have approached the term knowledge, perception and research over the past weeks, in particular, the methods used to answer complex research questions. By writing these posts and answering the posed questions in detail, you really had to get to know the texts and the subject in case. I felt that this tactic of reflection contributes a lot to the understanding and the appreciation of a topic and it made me ask myself when before I have before dealt with subjects that intensely and have put that much effort into understanding them. 

Although the first topic was administrated in the beginning of September and although we had to get into the basics of philosophy fairly quickly, it continued to stay in my mind till the end of the course. Thrown into deep water, we tried to navigate through the world of Kant and Plato exploring their comprehension of knowledge and the role of reason by that. This really served as base for everything that was about to come since their exploration and thinking is even as present and applicable today as it was in their time. In Platos Theaetetus, Socrates says 'knowledge is perception' bringing up one central element occurring in the themes: perception. Humans experience life through their own individual sensory perception and process the information further on by their perspective and past familiarities. What Kant tried to establish later on was the ideal of objectivity, so to speak approaching knowledge, as God would perceive it, independent of human shaped perception.

The topic from the second week dealt with two texts from the past century. Adorno and Horkheimer came from a background where they had seen that enlightenment, once the glorified progressive idea with the possibility of enhancing the world, was not at all able to change humanity, but resulted in political regime, cultural commercialization and the development of mass media. Benjamin Walter's opinion was more positive towards technology, thinking art had massive social revolutionary potential. He discussed the shift in art on the base of the past technological developments and art evolving through new media like film and photography.
The change in our medial perception and its effects I find to be very interesting, and bringing it to our present time, it is especially of importance. Who knows how our current way of assessing media is changing our deeply rooted values and behaviours opposite to past customs of socialization. As a Master student of Media Management, I felt the content of week two was extremely important and very connected to one of my favourite quotes, which perfectly summarizes the power of art and media and the responsibility that comes with it.

“Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” (Allen Ginsberg)

Covering the bases on the theories of knowledge it was significant to also get to know the practical understanding of conducting research. Reading various high quality papers that use different research methods helped a lot to get an understanding on the possibilities of obtaining knowledge scientifically.
Thus, theory was an important term we have discussed in its actual meaning, which is interesting when you think about the over usage of the word in general. Theories serve as explanatory framework for your observations, presenting and testing propositions to identify objects and their affiliation to each other. Most importantly, theories are constructed and have to be continually contrasted by practice. Moreover, we also drew the distinction between a hypothesis and a theory - for me a hypothesis in scientific research starts out as logical idea, which then can potentially become a theory when checked positively in reality. So we need hypotheses as a state of our current knowledge that then gets challenged by quantitatively or qualitatively testing.
Quantitative methods are beneficial to systematically measure propositions by using different tools and providing you with hart, replicable data explaining causalities. In comparison, qualitative methods are focusing more on individuals and their subjective analyses and understandings, for example via interviews, focus groups or through developing a case study. Since this method therefore adjusts to the subjects themselves and their point of view, it is mostly just possible to incorporate a lower number of people. If it helps achieving the research goal, it could also be of convenience combining qualitative and quantitative methods. Thus, a combination could improve the outcome by balancing out the strengths and weaknesses of another. Qualitative data can for example put more depth into plain quantitative data and can bring more life to the results.

It was also interesting to learn more about design research and in particular the use of prototypes to contribute answering research question. The accompanied lecture provoked a few ideas worth contemplating, for example the importance of finding the real problem of a situation first, in order to effectively use your the time and effort later and to concentrate the process of finding a solution on the actual true problem. The final week succeeded in bringing us closer to the field of case studies. Independent of the method used to acquire knowledge, case studies start with no pre-existing theory, because they try to create a theory. Acquiring new knowledge is one angle point in research and should always be a priority not to be forgotten. It can be argued about the right forms and exposition in conducting research, but it should also not be ignored that progress can be limited by too much reasoning and ruling.

Ending this course with a daring quote of Max Born, a German physicist and mathematician:

"I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed."