Summary written by Matthijs Bout, 2646780, an IBA student at the VU
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
● Chapter 2: The scientific approach to research (p.20-45)
○ Supervisor’s view: emeritus professor William W. Rozeboom
■ Hypothetico-Deductive training fails to recognize two potential
confirmation corruptions, hypothesis inflation, and consequence
dilution.
● Hypothesis inflation is as common as food mold and not
merely benign but operationally unavoidable… An
important admonition for science praxis follows
immediately from this: never interpret results of a
hypothesis test holistically. It is impractical for research
reports to attempt updating the credibilities of all
propositions to which its results are relevant, but it’s
important to appreciate that its h is generally a conflation
of many ideas and needs separate appraisals of its most
salient parts...
● Consequence dilution seems to be more metatheoretic
curiosity than an operational threat insomuch as
commonsense should scorn reasoning this manifestly
perverse even though disjunctive predictions such as a
parameter intervals aren’t always objectionable.
○ View from the trenches: dr. Jan Wieseke
■ The quest for a researcher is to abstract from the concrete
problem to a generalizable phenomenon. But it is difficult early
on to fully understand even what the ideal of generalizability
means.
■ A helpful thing for this challenge, “I would say” multidisciplinarity.
Being stuck within a single discipline can result in missing out on
key aspects of scientific methods and philosophies. It also
helped “me” to more clearly understand key scientific concepts.
“The best suggestion is to gain interdisciplinary insights as early
as possible within the Ph.D.-time”.
○ Some consider the social world to be part of the concern of science.
But even among social researchers, there is contradiction over what
science is. Science in one sense simply a label which one can put on a
field or discipline to distinguish it from another type. Science can also
be applied to a specific method for generating knowledge, which has
developed from the work of many eminent philosophers.
■ Key concepts of this chapter:
● How notions of science developed throughout the history
of philosophy.
● Different ideas about what science and scientific
knowledge are.
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
,Summary written by Matthijs Bout, 2646780, an IBA student at the VU
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
● The scientific method as a way of conducting research.
● The implications of such a viewpoint for social scientists.
○ “Why is it Important to Know This Stuff?”
■ You should understand the concepts (music is applied as an
example).
■ “Philosophy of science is like the music theory of research”.
■ It is important to have a grasp of the philosophy of science in
general, it is also important to have a good grounding in the
scientific approach to research. It is the backbone of many great
discoveries.
○ Philosophy and the roots of science
■ First philosophers were the Milesians (“what is reality made of?”)
● p.26 fig. 2.1:
■ They were unwilling to rely on supernatural (e.g. religious)
explanations for phenomena.
■ ‘Pre-Socratic’ philosophers contributed much to early philosophy
of science, even though most of the specifics of their ideas have
been disproved → scientific progress.
■ Socrates’ (‘father’ of Western philosophy) contribution was to
move philosophy away from questions of reality, and towards
questions of morality. Fundamental is a compelling one to all
good researchers: question everything.
■ Philosophers after Socrates, Plato, have much importance to
philosophy in general, but Aristotle appears to have first
articulated the concepts of deduction and induction (Chapter 1)
→ generalization.
● IDE 2.1: Generalization
○ Key concept in research: in essence the idea that
we can apply our specific results to a wider context
than just the one that we studied. Induction paved
the way for generalization, led to causality thinking.
This concept gives science the ability to predict
(rather than simply report what is happening).
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
, Summary written by Matthijs Bout, 2646780, an IBA student at the VU
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
■ Another event, theology: required considerations of the role of
God.
○ Renaissance, enlightenment and empiricism
■ Period of Church domination of Western is termed as ‘The Dark
Ages’.
■ The Renaissance was an explosion of artistic and scientific
endeavors. In Protestant countries, the Reformation was also
associated with an increase in scientific thinking.
● Galileo employed experimentation, induction, and
observation to make fundamental discoveries.
● Bacon began to elucidate the idea of physical causes,
and laws of nature which can be discovered by scientific
methods.
● Descartes’ belief that observed data were inferior and
untrustworthy compared with pure reason (rationalism)
kick-started one of the key debates of modern philosophy
of science → empiricism.
● Locke is one of the founders of empiricism.
■ Empiricism holds that the only knowledge we have can come
from observations.
● IDE 2.2: Rationalism and Empiricism: the debate is
possibly the key one in modern philosophy of science,
and it can be argued that it has still not been satisfactorily
resolved. The only thing Descartes was sure of was that
he was thinking. This idea naturally leads to the
contention that our reasoning must be of a greater value
than mere empirical observation (since we know that our
senses can be fooled).
● D. Hume was an empiricist, but he also discredited the
contention that inductive reasoning can be a source of
true knowledge, and this assertion is a key component of
the modern scientific method. Scientific findings are
merely conjecture.
● I. Kant (heavily influenced by Hume) can be thought of as
something of a mid-point between rationalism and
empiricism. Observations must be constituted by the mind
to create knowledge.
● G. Hegel proposed that ideas evolve towards a better
representation of reality through a dialectic process. An
idea is a thesis, which automatically creates an antithesis.
A struggle between these ideas naturally occurs until a
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
● Chapter 2: The scientific approach to research (p.20-45)
○ Supervisor’s view: emeritus professor William W. Rozeboom
■ Hypothetico-Deductive training fails to recognize two potential
confirmation corruptions, hypothesis inflation, and consequence
dilution.
● Hypothesis inflation is as common as food mold and not
merely benign but operationally unavoidable… An
important admonition for science praxis follows
immediately from this: never interpret results of a
hypothesis test holistically. It is impractical for research
reports to attempt updating the credibilities of all
propositions to which its results are relevant, but it’s
important to appreciate that its h is generally a conflation
of many ideas and needs separate appraisals of its most
salient parts...
● Consequence dilution seems to be more metatheoretic
curiosity than an operational threat insomuch as
commonsense should scorn reasoning this manifestly
perverse even though disjunctive predictions such as a
parameter intervals aren’t always objectionable.
○ View from the trenches: dr. Jan Wieseke
■ The quest for a researcher is to abstract from the concrete
problem to a generalizable phenomenon. But it is difficult early
on to fully understand even what the ideal of generalizability
means.
■ A helpful thing for this challenge, “I would say” multidisciplinarity.
Being stuck within a single discipline can result in missing out on
key aspects of scientific methods and philosophies. It also
helped “me” to more clearly understand key scientific concepts.
“The best suggestion is to gain interdisciplinary insights as early
as possible within the Ph.D.-time”.
○ Some consider the social world to be part of the concern of science.
But even among social researchers, there is contradiction over what
science is. Science in one sense simply a label which one can put on a
field or discipline to distinguish it from another type. Science can also
be applied to a specific method for generating knowledge, which has
developed from the work of many eminent philosophers.
■ Key concepts of this chapter:
● How notions of science developed throughout the history
of philosophy.
● Different ideas about what science and scientific
knowledge are.
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
,Summary written by Matthijs Bout, 2646780, an IBA student at the VU
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
● The scientific method as a way of conducting research.
● The implications of such a viewpoint for social scientists.
○ “Why is it Important to Know This Stuff?”
■ You should understand the concepts (music is applied as an
example).
■ “Philosophy of science is like the music theory of research”.
■ It is important to have a grasp of the philosophy of science in
general, it is also important to have a good grounding in the
scientific approach to research. It is the backbone of many great
discoveries.
○ Philosophy and the roots of science
■ First philosophers were the Milesians (“what is reality made of?”)
● p.26 fig. 2.1:
■ They were unwilling to rely on supernatural (e.g. religious)
explanations for phenomena.
■ ‘Pre-Socratic’ philosophers contributed much to early philosophy
of science, even though most of the specifics of their ideas have
been disproved → scientific progress.
■ Socrates’ (‘father’ of Western philosophy) contribution was to
move philosophy away from questions of reality, and towards
questions of morality. Fundamental is a compelling one to all
good researchers: question everything.
■ Philosophers after Socrates, Plato, have much importance to
philosophy in general, but Aristotle appears to have first
articulated the concepts of deduction and induction (Chapter 1)
→ generalization.
● IDE 2.1: Generalization
○ Key concept in research: in essence the idea that
we can apply our specific results to a wider context
than just the one that we studied. Induction paved
the way for generalization, led to causality thinking.
This concept gives science the ability to predict
(rather than simply report what is happening).
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
, Summary written by Matthijs Bout, 2646780, an IBA student at the VU
Course: Academic Skills IBA (IBA E_IBA1_ACSK)
Academic year: 2019/2020 (P3)
■ Another event, theology: required considerations of the role of
God.
○ Renaissance, enlightenment and empiricism
■ Period of Church domination of Western is termed as ‘The Dark
Ages’.
■ The Renaissance was an explosion of artistic and scientific
endeavors. In Protestant countries, the Reformation was also
associated with an increase in scientific thinking.
● Galileo employed experimentation, induction, and
observation to make fundamental discoveries.
● Bacon began to elucidate the idea of physical causes,
and laws of nature which can be discovered by scientific
methods.
● Descartes’ belief that observed data were inferior and
untrustworthy compared with pure reason (rationalism)
kick-started one of the key debates of modern philosophy
of science → empiricism.
● Locke is one of the founders of empiricism.
■ Empiricism holds that the only knowledge we have can come
from observations.
● IDE 2.2: Rationalism and Empiricism: the debate is
possibly the key one in modern philosophy of science,
and it can be argued that it has still not been satisfactorily
resolved. The only thing Descartes was sure of was that
he was thinking. This idea naturally leads to the
contention that our reasoning must be of a greater value
than mere empirical observation (since we know that our
senses can be fooled).
● D. Hume was an empiricist, but he also discredited the
contention that inductive reasoning can be a source of
true knowledge, and this assertion is a key component of
the modern scientific method. Scientific findings are
merely conjecture.
● I. Kant (heavily influenced by Hume) can be thought of as
something of a mid-point between rationalism and
empiricism. Observations must be constituted by the mind
to create knowledge.
● G. Hegel proposed that ideas evolve towards a better
representation of reality through a dialectic process. An
idea is a thesis, which automatically creates an antithesis.
A struggle between these ideas naturally occurs until a
Lee, N and Lings, I. (2008). Doing Business Research: a Guide to Theory and Practice (1st edition). London: SAGE
Publications Ltd
