Inquiry Driven Systems
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3.2. Reflective Inquiry. Note 1
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3.2.1. Integrity and Unity of Inquiry
One of the very first questions that one encounters in
the inquiry into inquiry is one that challenges both the
integrity and the unity of inquiry, a question that asks:
"Is inquiry one or many?" By this one means two things:
1. Concerning the integrity of inquiry: How are the components and
the properties of inquiry, as identified by analysis, integrated
into a whole that is singly and solely responsible for its results,
and as it were, that answers for its answers in one voice? These
qualities of unanimity and univocity are necessary in order to be
able to speak of an inquiry as a coherent entity, whose nature it
is to have and to hold the boundaries one finds in or gives to it,
rather than being an artificial congeries of naturally unrelated
elements and features. In other words, this is required in order
to treat inquiry as a systematic function, that is, as the action,
behavior, conduct, or operation of a system.
2. Concerning the unity of inquiry: Is the form of inquiry that
is needed for reasoning about facts the same form of inquiry
that is needed for reasoning about actions and goals, duties
and goods, feelings and values, guesses and hopes, and so on,
or does each sort of inquiry -- aesthetic, ethical, practical,
speculative, or whatever -- demand and deserve a dedicated and
distinctive form? Although it is clear that some degree of
modulation is needed to carry out different modes of inquiry,
is the adaptation so radical that one justly considers it to
generate different forms, or is the changeover merely a matter
of mildly tweaking the same old tunes and draping new materials
on the same old forms?
Jon Awbrey
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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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