The ability to structure our insights into a well-formed argument is crucial for producing new public knowledge. (Illustrative Image Created with Microsoft Copilot)
Dr Brainerd Prince
The research is finally complete.
We began with a significant problem in the world and identified a theme we wanted to pursue. Then we looked up the correlating thematic within a particular discipline under which we wanted to examine and investigate that theme.The thematic was the technical term within that disciplinary language that captured the essence of the problem and the theme we wanted to pursue.
We, then, conducted a literature review and looked at the historical discourse on the thematic, followed by the contemporary debate, which revealed the present gap in the literature on the thematic. We then converted this gap into a research question.
Now that we have identified the research question, we scouted for an object of research from which we could derive insights to answer the research question and fill the gap.Different types of research objects require different methodologies. So, we turned our focus to developing a methodology for our research. On the one hand, we examined the methods needed for data collection and data analysis from our object of research. On the other hand, we explored lenses and frameworks through which we could interpret the data to derive new insights and answer our research question.In this last stage, after we analysed the data,we arrived at our insights, findings, and research results.
At this point, the research is complete—yet it is the researcher who has undertaken this entire process, and nothing has been shared with the world. The researcher now possesses a wealth of annotated notes, data, and analysis, but none of these are available to the world,and none of them have the status of being public knowledge. Now, after completing the research process, we must transform our findings into public knowledge.
This transformation serves two purposes. First, it allows the researcher to bring their voice into the world. Now, they have earned the right to speak and share their new insights. Second, it enables them to make a strategic, innovative contribution to their discipline. The researcher has examined the historical discourse on the thematic, identified its limitations and problems, and conducted research that provides insights to advance that conversation.However, it is the way we present our findings that determines whether our findings can be considered public knowledge.
This brings us to the final task of writing up our research. While this does not mean that we have not written anything up to this point, what we have not done is write out a coherent script that has the sole purpose of communicating our findings to our disciplinary peers.
Ideally, when identifying real-world problems and selecting a significant issue, we have documented our thoughts. Similarly, during the literature review, as we read a bunch of academic texts, we crafted a narrative capturing how the thematic evolved historically. We articulated debates among different schools of thought and clearly identified the research gap, framing it into a research question.Likewise, when discussing methodology, we structured it into a proper piece of text. As for the object of research that provided insights, we initially tried to understand that specific field, text, or experiment, which was to be our object of research and documented its descriptions. Finally, we have all the records of the data we collected and its analysis. So, we are not starting from scratch—we already have these pieces written down.
However, when we talk about writing up the research, we mean constructing an argument so that our findings achieve the status of public knowledge. The goal is to take our results, findings, and insights and frame them within a structured argument. An argument is simply a claim or assertion regarding our new findings—an insight we have gathered, framed as a claim.Yet, a claim alone does not constitute an argument. To construct an argument, we need additional elements – premises, turnstile (reasoning) and evidence.
Premises form the foundation on which our claim stands. Aristotelian logic describes two types of premises: a major premise, which is a well-established law, principle, or theory accepted as a given, and a minor premise, which is an empirical observation verified through evidence. The minor premise is typically a subset of the major premise. The major premise is a universal statement, and the minor premise is the empirical fulfilment of that universal for a particular case. From the reasoning of these two premises, one can deduce a conclusion, which is our claim or assertion. For example, consider the major premise ‘all bachelors are unmarried’. This is universal because the inherent meaning of the term bachelor is unmarried. This is similar to saying ‘A is A’ Immanuel Kant calls this an analytic proposition as compared to a synthetic proposition. Analytic propositions are those where the predicate is contained within the subject concept, as we saw in our example, ‘all bachelors are unmarried’, while synthetic propositions extend knowledge by adding something new to the subject, for example,‘all bachelors are unhappy’. The minor premise is an empirical proposition about a subject that satisfies the condition of the major premise. For example, ‘Tom is unmarried’. What is important is that while this minor premise is based on empirical data, the marital status of Tom, it also contains the subject, Tom, on which we are going to make a claim. Our claim is ‘Tom is a bachelor’. To prove our claim, we need to show that Tom is unmarried, which is what we have done through the minor premise.
Turnstile is the reasoning that makes the logical connection between premises and the claim. It links the major and minor premises to the conclusion. The word "therefore" often functions as a turnstile, much like a turnstile in a metro station that moves in one direction to allow passage of passengers. It is the reasoning that allows us to move from premises to conclusion.
For example, if the major premise is ‘all bachelors are unmarried," and the minor premise (empirical observation) is ‘Tom is unmarried’, then the conclusion or our claim begins with the turnstile ‘therefore’ which connects both the premises to the conclusion or claim that follows, ‘Tom is a bachelor’.Thus, the word "therefore" serves as the turnstile that links the premises to the claim.
Finally, the evidence that we provideis the additional validation that strengthens the claim. Beyond empirical validation, supporting evidence helps strengthen the argument. For our claim that ‘Tom is a bachelor’, we could give evidence that he lives alone, or that there are no records of his marriage. All the evidence we gather supports our argument.
When the insights from our research can be written out using the structure of an argument, then it can be said to be new knowledge. The main insights we have discovered through our research can be said to be the claims or assertions we are making at the end of our research about our thematic. The claims themselves are couched in the language that comes from the methodological, conceptual lens that we used to interpret and analyse the data. The object of research provides us with the evidence that is needed to substantiate our claim. The disciplinary discourse which gave us the research question provides us with the major premise whose condition we must satisfy for our claim to get the status of new knowledge.
The ability to structure our insights into a well-formed argument is crucial for producing new public knowledge. Ultimately, the entire process of writing up research follows the structured framework of a research paper. We will unfold this structure in the next article.
Dr Brainerd Prince is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Centre for Thinking, Language and Communication at Plaksha University
