Understanding theory (1)

Source: verysmartbrothas.com

It has been confusing since my first day as a PhD student about theory and its relationships with science, and other interchangeable concepts such as models, hypothesis and conceptual framework. Now I am beginning to get it. Below I will list several bullet points which show my understanding of theory.

1. “Reality is merely an illusion.”

Albert Einstein once said, ‘the whole of science of nothing more than an extension of everyday thinking.’ As we know, people think everyday because they want figure out and understand the thing around them, specifically, the reality or the truth of things. In this sense, science is nothing different from everyday thinking.

But, it is not that simple and easy to approach the reality. Before we begin to explore the reality of the world, we have to deliberate on the action of exploration itself, we have to examine the angle or perspective from which we look into the problem.

We found that we have quite different perspectives to approach realty. There are more perspectives on how people think about reality. But here we only focus on two of them. The first belief, termed realism, believe that reality exists independently of any human presence and there is an external world comprised of objects that follow a myriad of natural facts and laws. What we do is only to discover these facts and laws. The other belief termed social constructionist, however, hold that reality is merely an illusion (also by Albert Einstein) and a reflection of human mind on the world. The reality depends on a particular time and social context, varies with the time and social context. Both the two beliefs have supporters. In my understanding, realism is more like the doctrine natural scientists hold and support. For example, physicists probably would say the universe is the reality and it does exist no matter what you think of it. We can only strive to discover a piece of laws from the reality. Social constructionist, however, is advocated by social scientists because many subjects in social science like the courage, attitude, politics and so on are all construction of human mind. All of them are tied to a particular time and social context.

2. A theory is a conceptual system about relationships between concepts that can be publicly testable.

To put it simply, a theory consists of concepts or construct that are constructed from lower-level concepts, relationships between concepts and the assumptions on which relationships draw, and testable hypothesis derived from these relationships. Next I will explicate some noteworthy features in this definition of theory.

First, we have to recognize that all concepts are hypothetical. They are not reality, just ideas regarding reality. Although hypothetical, these concepts offer references to objects in external environment, either observable entities such as tables and buildings, or intangible phenomenon like love and hunger.

Then two or more concepts that interplay with each other comprise conceptual systems. In other words, relationships between two or more concepts connect these concepts together and form a conceptual system. Remember here that the purpose and utility of a theory or conceptual system, is to understand the world, specifically, to identify, describe, organize, differentiate, predict and explain the delimited portion of the experienced world.

Therefore the question is how do theories demonstrate its utility? As we know, theories are not necessarily true. They must be subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation, and avoid to be metaphysical. By developing and testing hypothesis inferred from the theories, scientists are able to tie the conceptual world of theories to empirical world. Once a theory is confirmed, its build-in nature of linking the empirical world enable people to use it to identify, describe, organize, differentiate, predict and explain the world.

Bibliography

Jaccard, J., & Jacoby, J. (2011). Theory construction and model-building skills: A practical guide for social scientists: Guilford Press.