Ways of Knowing

There are a variety of ways to investigate a research question or hypothesis. In 1986, Kerlinger, using definitions provided nearly a century ago by C. S. Peirce, presents four approaches to finding answers, or “methods of knowing.” They are tenacity, intuition, authority, and science. As Wimmer & Dominick (2003) state:

A user of the method of tenacity follows the logic that something is true because it has always been true. An example is the storeowner, who says, “I don’t advertise because my parents did not believe in advertising.” The idea is that nothing changes-what was good, bad, or successful before will continue to be so in the future.

In the method of intuition, or the a priori approach, a person assumes that something is true because it is “self-evident” or “stands to reason.” Some creative people in advertising agencies resist efforts to test their advertising methods because they believe they know what will attract customers. To these people, scientific research is a waste of time.

The method of authority promotes a belief in something because a trusted source, such as a parent, a news correspondent, or a teacher, says it is true. The emphasis is on the source, not on the methods the source may have used to gain the information.

The scientific method approaches learning as a series of small steps. That is, one study or one source provides only an indication of what may or may not be true; the “truth” is found through a series of objective analyses. This means that the scientific method is self-correcting in that changes in thought or theory are appropriate when errors in previous research are uncovered. 

For example, in 1984 Barry Marshall, a medical resident in Perth, Australia, identified a bacterium (Helicobacter pylori or H. pylori) as the cause of stomach ulcers (not an increase in stomach acid due to stress or anxiety). After several years, hundreds of independent studies proved that Marshall was correct, and in 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a combination of drugs to fight ulcers-an antacid and an antibiotic.

In this class, we adopt the scientific method way of learning.