I have a simpler distinction that has its crosshairs on this "meta" business,
which seems to come from the purely cognitive paradigms, and that is
methodology is a practice, the patterned actions, of investigating the methods
of a particular field. So, indeed, analyzing methodologies, which in a
cognitive paradigm would be a meta-meta-method thing, is instead a more
relational thing -- the investigation of the practices of methodologists. what
I find especially interesting is how this is an alternative view to a
hierarchical structure of relations, one that levels it, to a web of relations,
with no clear "up" direction.
"Where life is beautiful all the time..."
bb
--- SANUSI ALENA LEE <sanusi@ucsu.colorado.edu> wrote:
> Diane wrote:
>
> > hi mike - i suppose i've been using these words interchangeably - is there
> > a substantial difference between method and methodology?
> > i'm assuming method describes the what of inquiry, and methodology
> > describes why the what is what it is... ?
>
> Well, if pushed, I would say that I think of "method" as closer to
> "technique" or "stepwise proceeding" and "methodology" as method plus the
> ontological and epistemological underpinnings that contextualize any
> particular way of proceeding. So lab manipulation would be a method, the
> methodology being objectivist assumptions and positivist goals that make
> lab manipulation meaningful. So method and methodology are intimately
> connected, although distinguishable. I like to think of methodology (if
> this is a reasonably valid way of thinking of it!) as the incorporation of
> old theories into the underpinnings that we need as we go on our way to
> new theories. (I have a metatheory of theories as ways of seeing.)
>
> --Alena
>
=====
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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