Being a doctoral student and pondering my own future research has led to some interesting questions for me. Aside from How am I going to get up in five hours and make it to that meeting on time? and Which coffee shop will have the shortest line and be the most satisfying at 6:45 am? I wonder about other things, too: What is at the core of research, science, and discovery? What is it that we are really after? Why is there a such a deep seated need to provide empirical evidence for something? I can tell you lack of sleep is going to have some pretty nasty effects on me if I keep it up- I don't need an article to make me understand that. Yet, we need the research; we need something to trust in that is indisputable. Ahh... so we're looking for something that is indisputable?
If you have read The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, you may get what I'm talking about here (if you haven't, put it at the top of your reading list- NOW!). We are searching externally for answers that are within us. We so desperately want the world to make sense that we're not willing to believe anything that isn't published in a journal and researched until the Bunsen burners have stopped working- we're not willing to trust ourselves and our intuition a little bit. My genius husband once commented on how much energy we burn trying to go into outerspace and see and understand; yet most of us don't even spend a fraction of that energy on understanding ourselves.
I believe we are evolving, though. As evidenced by my qualitative research class last semester, we are putting some stock in our stories. That is a beautiful thing, and a sign to me that the future is going to be wild! In an ode to this realization, I wrote this poem (inspired by my qualitative research class) one evening after being thoroughly bamboozled by the hundreds of terms related to inquiry.
~The Internal Lightyear~
(by Poonam Desai)
inquiry guides those of us that
are capable of carrying forward
thought- those that
are the product of cognitive evolution
those that seek truth or Truth
some explorers make sense of the world
through the lends of a microscope, or by
measuring and weighing
theory against theory-
me? i've got ten bucks on pospositivist critical
other explorers desire to create anew
the original form in a sterile
petri dish or in the womb
of a desperate woman-would-be-mother
beaker? check. survey? check. scalpel? check
answer?
...
and what of those softer scientists: the
philosophers that go as deep into the mind as far as astronomers seek external insight...
nature of man vs. water on mars
we are fiction. we are science.
will it ever stop- the search?
will newton's second law apply here as well?
our friction only carries us forward-
we will dissect ourselves into tinier and tinier
pieces, our fleshy fragments
dissolving into naught,
and in the very smallest bit, we will find
the Grandeur.
If you have read The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield, you may get what I'm talking about here (if you haven't, put it at the top of your reading list- NOW!). We are searching externally for answers that are within us. We so desperately want the world to make sense that we're not willing to believe anything that isn't published in a journal and researched until the Bunsen burners have stopped working- we're not willing to trust ourselves and our intuition a little bit. My genius husband once commented on how much energy we burn trying to go into outerspace and see and understand; yet most of us don't even spend a fraction of that energy on understanding ourselves.
I believe we are evolving, though. As evidenced by my qualitative research class last semester, we are putting some stock in our stories. That is a beautiful thing, and a sign to me that the future is going to be wild! In an ode to this realization, I wrote this poem (inspired by my qualitative research class) one evening after being thoroughly bamboozled by the hundreds of terms related to inquiry.
~The Internal Lightyear~
(by Poonam Desai)
inquiry guides those of us that
are capable of carrying forward
thought- those that
are the product of cognitive evolution
those that seek truth or Truth
some explorers make sense of the world
through the lends of a microscope, or by
measuring and weighing
theory against theory-
me? i've got ten bucks on pospositivist critical
other explorers desire to create anew
the original form in a sterile
petri dish or in the womb
of a desperate woman-would-be-mother
beaker? check. survey? check. scalpel? check
answer?
...
and what of those softer scientists: the
philosophers that go as deep into the mind as far as astronomers seek external insight...
nature of man vs. water on mars
we are fiction. we are science.
will it ever stop- the search?
will newton's second law apply here as well?
our friction only carries us forward-
we will dissect ourselves into tinier and tinier
pieces, our fleshy fragments
dissolving into naught,
and in the very smallest bit, we will find
the Grandeur.
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