ONT Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Subj: Inquiry Into Inquiry
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 23:56:13 -0500
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Peirce Lyrist <peirce-l@lyris.acs.ttu.edu>
There are a few notes of inquiry that I would like to pluck out of their
recent entanglements in the "Qualitative Induction" thread, because they
resonate, in their fundametal tenor, with a wider concern of mine, and I
think perhaps many of yours, too, issues that I have been treating in my
Thesis under the theme of the "Inquiry into Inquiry". Against my common
practice, I will try to state these questions here, at least, at first,
as succinctly as I possibly can, and then return to my readings to seek
out their answering chords, whether in our customary canon, or elsewhere.
I can no longer continue to play on distant echoes and other impressions
that I seem to hear being harped back to me from my dim and dimmer past.
Here are the questions, with only such accompaniment as I need
to conduct the clearest faithful sense of their meaning to you:
(1a) Is inquiry a fit subject for inquiry?
In other words:
(1b) Is inquiry a subject that can be inquired into?
To render certain, normally understood, aspects of this question more
explicit, and, at the same time, to accord the benefit of certain doubts
to "nominal thinkers", that is, to those who ordinarily call themselves by
the name of "nominalists", the question can be rephrased in the following way:
(1c) Does the sign "inquiry" denote an object that can be inquired into
with any hope of success?
The next question, that follows all but immediately upon the first, is this:
(2a) What is a true theory of inquiry?
To ask the question more modestly, as befits the modest condition of
our current understanding -- well, mine, at least -- the question is
better asked in the following form:
(2b) What signs do we have of what a true theory of inquiry would be like?
Those are the questions.
I have feeling that they will be enough to occupy me for a while.
Now, just let me say one or two things about the various ways that
I presently plan to approach these questions, if not being so bold
and so blunt as to think that they will bring me to approach their
answers any time soon.
In doing this, since the oh-so-grandiose title of "theory" so often
conveys the wrong impression, I hope that you will permit me to use
a motley assembly of more humble terms in its place, picking out the
roughly equivalent substitute that best fits the setting, the tone,
and the order of grandiloquence that has a chance of being revealed
in the offing, the outcome, or the upshot of the inquiry in question.
Among these proxies I will number the following set as my favorites:
{"account", "description", "indication", "sign", "story", "theory"}.
No, on second thought, on third thought, and that ought to be enough
for a pragmatic thinker, I am going to hold off on laying out my plans,
all the better to afford you the chance and the opportunity to stake out
your own.
Dream most fitfully, as will I,
Jon
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