On the path of discovery

When I came across the example in Salsa Dancing about Frank Luntz calling for the need to employ both the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ into research (p 38), I was reminded of something a former professor of mine said to my class. He told us that our jobs as historians (it was a Polish history class) was not simply to describe an event, but to explain why things happened the way they did. In terms of social research, I suppose this translates into why things happen the way they do, which means taking in as much information about something as possible, and with a critical eye analyzing, contextualizing and somehow turning it into something… which is really daunting. But also kind of exciting! Luker also mentions the “logic of discovery” (p 39) as being part of research and I couldn’t agree more. Who hasn’t begun a project hoping to find/prove one thing and then actually discovered something different (and hopefully better)? Having said this, I’m still on the search for a good research proposal topic...

Caitilín