I’m on sabbatical at the moment and so I feel entitled to think Big Thoughts. However this one is a rather embarrassing thought. The more I think it the more I realize that I’m not really very sure what the word ‘Theory’ means. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe ‘theory’ is just one of those Humpty Dumpty words that means whatever the speaker chooses it to mean. But I’m often present in situations including academic job interviews where person A asks person B: “So what do you see as your theoretical contribution?” I worry because I’ve no idea how I would answer, given that I’m not at all sure what a theoretical contribution is, let alone if I have one or more to make.
My background is in computer science and I still consider myself to be a computer scientist, albeit a rather odd one. I now work in a School of Library and Information Science that is also an iSchool. CS doesn’t seem to be bothered too much by theory. A lot of it is about building stuff that is better-faster-cheaper. Or that is more powerful or generic. Or building processes or things that allow other people to build things better-faster-cheaper. Yes there are theoretical computer scientists and I think I know what they do – looking at the big picture abstractions of invariants across all or whole categories of programs or computation or whatever. But they are definitely allocatable to a special category, and CS departments normally have just a few of them kept together in out of the way places so as not to frighten the students. It is rumoured that they use blackboards and consort with mathematicians. They show what they do is right, not by measuring it against other people’s stuff and showing theirs is better, but by doing proofs.
It is very different in LIS. Everyone seems to bang on about theory and to expect everyone else to do so too. But what do they mean? Do they all mean the same thing? Or are there at least some aggregations of agreements?
I used to think I knew but now I’m having doubts.
Some definitions
A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as
accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed. (OED) cribbed by me from (McGrath 2002)
And from (McKechnie & Pettigrew 2002):
- “A set of explanatory concepts” (Silverman, 1993, p. 1)
- “a statement or group of statements about how some part of the world works–frequently explaining relationships among phenomena” (Vogt, 1993, p. 232);
- “a systematic explanation for the observed facts and laws that relate to a particular aspect of life” (Babbie, 1992, p. 55);
- “generalizations which seek to explain relationships among phenomena” (Grover & Glazier, 1986, p. 228);
So those all sound very nice, friendly and manageable. I understand them. Any halfway decent research paper should have things in it that can be described by one or more of the above. So does that mean that all such halfway decent research papers have a theory in them? I’d be happy with this rather universalist definition of theory, but I’ve a feeling that a lot of my peers wouldn’t. I think they mean something stricter and rarer. It’s just that I’m not sure what it is.
Well I’m not going to solve this puzzler today. I can see I’ll have to do more reading, thinking and talking before I get any clearer.
From Analysis to Synthesis
But, in the interests of true academic game play herewith are a set of theories about theories. That obviously makes them metatheories and therefore count double points. I present them as also hypotheses to be tested in my ongoing reading.
- The Declarative Metatheory. A theory is a theory if someone says it is a theory
- The Nominative Metatheory. A theory is a theory if it has “theory” in its title
- The Acclamatory Metatheory. A theory is a theory if someone other than its author cites it.
- The Teleological Metatheory. A theory is a theory if it does something useful in helping understand or predict something other than the case or example it is derived from
- The Obscurantist Metatheory. A theory is a theory if it uses long complicated words to say something that is blindingly obvious if translated into plain English
- The StrictInterpretationist Metatheories: variants of the above with ‘if’ replaced by ‘iff’
Now we’re on a roll. If we can have theories about theories, why not theories about theories about theories?
So with a roll of drums, ladies and gentlemen let me present:
- The Classificatory Metametatheory. All theories can be described by one or more of the preceding metatheories
References
Babbie, E. (1992). The practice of social research, 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Grover, R., & Glazier, J. (1986). A conceptual framework for theory building in library and information science. Library and Information Science Research, 8(3), 227-242.
McGrath, W.E. (2002). Introduction: library science and theory. Library Trends, 50(3), 309-16.
McKechnie, L. M., & Pettigrew, K. E. (2002). Surveying the use of theory in library and information science research: A disciplinary perspective. Library Trends, 50(3), 406-417.
Silverman, D. (1993). Interpreting qualitative data: Methods for analysing talk, text and interaction. London: Sage.
Vogt, W. P. (1993). Dictionary of statistics and methodology: A nontechnical guide for the social sciences. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
