Where are my glasses?

I admit that I author a very boring blog. In an attempt to possible hook one or two readers into my blog I have adopted the strategy of using very simple questions as titles (hence, "Where are my glasses?"). Readers beware: my blogs are just as boring as ever. Hopefully my trick will get a few readers to read through at least the first paragraph of my post.

Continuing with my thoughts on epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) my mind has been lingering on the question of how knowledge is discovered. Particularly I am asking myself about the limits of research to provide useful (or beneficial) information. For any one research study to properly scrutinize the veracity of a principle it must be extremely near-sighted (to use an ophthamolgical metaphor). An exceedingly small part of existence is chosen for study (i.e. patients with acute neck pain referred below the elbow, or adsorption of a particular gas on a solid surface, etc). Years of thorough examination and testing will provide excellent description about the nature of this exceedingly small area replete with evidence for 'behavior' or 'interactions' of variables within the defined scope of study.

However, clinicians and engineers are charged with the task of working within a relatively enormous swath of reality (i.e. restoring functional wholeness to a person after an accident, or designing a subliming animal repellent, etc.). At times the myopic nature of research will prohibit the clinician from generalizing conclusions from research to the treatment of his patient. Perhaps the research literature has not yet broadly examined the problem at hand or perhaps the research has been primarily laboratory oriented without the intrusion of variables which are present in the clinic. Times like this require the clinician to step beyond the research and either rely on a mentor's imparted knowledge or to intuit a new method for treatment. Does this mean that the clinician (or engineer) is definitely making an error? Absolutely not. The clinician is relying on a different skill set to arrive at knowledge.

Whether or not the clinician arrives at erroneous knowledge does not depend on the research, rather the veracity of the clinicians knowledge depends on nothing more than its veracity. Can it get any simpler than that? Intuition leads the clinician down a path that is either mistaken or correct. Absence of research does not determine the falseness of a principle (and often times the presence of research which apparently counters a principle does not definitively determine the falseness of a principle--this is the case when myopic research is over generalized). Rather it is the lack of parallel between principle and reality that determines a principle’s falseness...empiricism teaches us that much.

Considering the research discussed in my last post it is apparent that the authors have gathered treatment methods from various respected schools of thought within the physical therapy community. These schools of thought originated when an individual therapist experienced an epiphany. For example, a veteran therapist experienced an epiphany of understanding, applied principles from the epiphany in the clinic, empirically observed positive outcomes, and began teaching other therapists what she had discovered. As research developed regarding the therapist's principles the task began of verifying what the therapist already knew to be true. Once again, the research does not determine the veracity of a principle...the veracity (or lack thereof) is predetermined by the principle’s parallel to reality. Instead, the research serves to inform the community of the principle's veracity (or lack thereof). Research is merely a matter of opening up the mind to a pre-existing reality of veracity (or lack thereof).