On Research

Posted Tue Oct 23, 2001 in

WeaverI decided to share a photograph from deep in my archives. This one was taken at a regional fair in 1976 on Kodak Plus-X film (which I bought out-of-date) and processed myself in Kodak D-76 developer. I don’t think I ever printed this frame. Her hand is just a little hot and should be burned in, but I haven’t figured out how to do this on the computer (yet).

Anyway, this morning I’ve been responding to an email from one of my best friends and she got me thinking about research. (One useful fact about email is the fact it’s asynchronous, which means that conversations can happen when it’s convenient for both parties. This is especially important with this friend, because she tends to operate on the other side of the clock from me. ;)

The point is, I’ve always been a researcher. My grandmother told me a story about when she took me to buy my very first book. I was young, maybe four or five years old. When she asked me what book I wanted, I chose a seventh-grade science book. (OK, those of you who know me can quit laughing now! Stop it! I say.) I couldn’t even read it at the time, but I learned to.

As I grew older, I was very interested in science and things of science. I remember taking an interest in astronomy at an age of about 12 years. At the time, my family was solidly middle-class. My dad was a blue-collar worker, a backhoe operator who was self-employed. He’d owned and operated a heavy construction business for a number of years, but decided to sell it (I don’t know why) and go solo. (It probably had a lot to do with managing all those employees.) Anyway, I digress. My parents were good to provide materials when I got interested in something, so my mother bought me books. I read a lot, learned how to build a telescope and had one in progress when we moved to Missouri from California. I had a lot of books from Edmund Scientific on optics, telescope making, and astronomy. I used to love reading through those catalogs. (My young son does this same thing now that I did back then.)

Anyway, to continue the thought, the pattern was set by the time I was 12 years old. I’ve always been a researcher. When a new interest strikes me, I begin a data gathering phase. That usually means a trip to B&N to buy some magazines and look over the book selection. There’s probably a trip to the library (both Lubbock Public Library and the Tech library). As I accumulate more and more information, there comes the immersion phase, in which I pile on the material, reading everything I can get my hands on (and then some). I may make written notes, although sometimes not. I’ve found that I use the computer more for note taking now. As I process the information gathered, I begin a synthesis phase, in which I work at bringing together all the different voices that I’ve read, refining and distilling the data and making them my own. Following synthesis, I usually begin the testing stage, in which I conduct my own experiments (attempts to duplicate prior results, tests to confirm facts, sometimes physical and sometimes thought) to determine the validity of what I’ve learned, and to discover holes in my knowledge. I’m also in the process of building the links between the facts and understanding relations between facts at this stage. Finally, I’ll begin a refinement stage, during which I continue reading, but not as intensely, and I continue to learn.

The process may take days or months. It just depends on the subject. I also go through stages, in which I develop knowledge in steps over a period of years.

Somewhere along the way, the DATA makes a transformation into KNOWLEDGE. There’s a huge difference between data and knowledge. I’ve known many people who can recite facts from memory. However, understanding of the processes that link the facts and the arrangement of facts into new insight and further exploration is what makes knowledge. Encyclopedic factual data of a subject can be useful, especially when it leads to understanding, application, and exploration. Rote memorization of facts, without knowledge, is useless.