Recently, researchers have noticed that in primate brains the part of the visual system that has expanded the most is the region identified with the ability to distinguish nearby objects from their backgrounds and with the ability to see camouflaged objects. This is interesting. It means that the ability to see snakes, for example, might have proved functional to species survival.
Indeed, Isbell (2006) reports the species of monkeys with the sharpest eyesight tend to be those who live in closest proximity to venomous snakes. For example, the Malagasy lemurs, the primates with the least complex visual systems, live in Madagascar, a place where venomous snakes have never lived. Primates in Africa and Asia, where venomous snakes have been around for about 100 million years, have the best vision. Humans are descendants of that group. Could it be that African=Asian primates that failed to develop excellent vision were disproportionately killed by snakes? Isbell notes the observation made a century ago by P. Chalmers Mitchell and R.I. Pocock when they carried writhing snakes into a roomful of caged chimpanzees, baboons, and lemurs. The African=Asian chimpanzees and baboons were panic-stricken, chattering loudly, and retreating as high up and far away in their cages as possible. In contrast, the Malagasy lemurs, lacking sophisticated vision, were unperturbed. Hence, the snake theory of excellent human eyesight gains credibility.
This short example of theory building shows how an interaction of data and theory and a strong norm of openness to revision have contributed to the formidable power of evolutionary theory.
Despite its prestige in the scientific community, evolutionary theory continues to call itself a theory—a testimony to the hesitancy, tentativity, and open-mindedness that exemplifies scientific inquiry. Whether the snake-detection hypothesis withstands future tests of theoretical coherence and empirical observation is, consistent with the spirit of inquiry, an open question.
Though it is important to distinguish between them, empirical data and theories may not be such completely distinct categories as philosophers once portrayed them to be. Instead of insisting that theory precedes facts, or that facts precede theory, it might be better to see the two as intimately related. Facts are described differently from different theoretical perspectives. One theory can detect facts that are invisible to another theory. Arboreal theory shed light on different empirical data than visual predation theory did. Some facts—that primates lived in trees—are important in arboreal theory but not in visual predation theory. Meanwhile, the snake-vision theory makes use of correlations between the presence of snakes and complexity of vision in primates, and the conver- sation shifts. Evolution is talked about less in terms of hunting and eating, as in visual predation theory, and more in terms of avoiding being killed. In all these cases, different facts were emphasized in different theories. Because of this interdependence between theory and fact, a theory and its facts may be thought of as a paradigm or as complementary elements of a narrative.
(Roethlisberger, 1967) was that the investigator is part of the problem and thus interacts with the subject of inquiry. The presence of a researcher alters the behavior of the subjects of the study.
Of course, social scientists nonetheless strive for a less partial view and seek to maintain a convincing distance from their subjects, but only on rare occasions can observers of social reality credibly claim an objective distance from their subjects. A methodology for a science that includes the observer as an integral part of the observation is still in the process of development under the various efforts taking place in qualitative research.
2.2.1 THEQUEST OFREASON
Empirical testing, whether qualitative or quantitative, is but one of many ways of subjecting a narrative to critique. Common in the social sciences too are logical tests of coherence and reason, critical tests of justice and fairness, political tests of interests and domination, and the applications of various ethical or moral criteria including efficiency, responsibility, kindness, and equal treatment.
There are many rhetorical ways that theory can be undermined, affirmed, redirected, or ignored. The contest of ideas is rarely just about facts. It is also a matter of putting events and ideas into a framework so that the world seems less chaotic. Organizing events and ideas into frameworks is the work of theory building. This theorizing, narrative writing, data reporting, and story telling is very much a collegial enterprise, subject to peer review, critical consideration, and rebuttal.
Theory in the social sciences thus may be thought of as a narrative-creating enterprise that is subject to critical reflection among communities of inquirers. Hence, theorizing is storytelling but of a special sort—disciplined by reason and collegial criticism. This use of reason does not imply that humans are by nature rational; Sigmund Freud put an end to those speculations. Rather, the criterion of reason means that beliefs and knowledge claims must be justified using appropriate evidence, inferences, or language. The sort of storytelling that counts as theory is not the same sort of storytelling onefinds in novels. Doctoral dissertations are frequently, though not always, structured into a story line that (1) states the research problem, (2) reviews the relevant literature, (3) discusses the procedures and methods employed to create a fair test of the hypothesis, (4) reports thefindings, and (5) announces the conclusions, implications, and limitations. This structure regularly conveys useful information to attentive scholars who are interested in a particular area of inquiry, even though students of literature mayfind the plot line to be unimaginative. Many empirically oriented scholarly journals require a similar style of storytelling in the articles published.
In applied disciplines such as public policy or administration the prevalence of and need for sense- making narratives are especially pronounced. Here, the function of theory entails research-for-action.
The weaving together of facts, metaphors, and values is a skill accomplished by a storyteller capable of interpreting the situation in preparation for actions or outcomes based on explicit end values.
2.2.2 METAPHORS
Rein (1976) regards the metaphor as the central element in storytelling.‘‘This means that we must rely upon actions or events that appear to be analogous to situations we already know and that permit us to reason from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Familiar concepts are brought into unfamiliar situations, and in the process they transform the unfamiliar. The metaphor enables us to describe patterns and tease out lessons’’(p. 75). Some metaphors that have now become standard usage in public administration include spoils system, administrative state, bureaucrat, chain of command, and red tape. In public administration or policy, the metaphor chosen is also suggestive of the action to be taken or the problem to be addressed.
Metaphors are often underappreciated as building blocks of theory, but understanding theory as narrative underscores the value of metaphors. The images and metaphors of a new theory may seem exotic at first, but over time they become part of ordinary language. Perhaps this is because metaphors are considered metaphors only when they arefirst introduced. Once upon a time it was
not the case that rivers literally had mouths. The same was true of bottles, which now not only have mouths, but some even have necks. Now that the language has accepted the metaphors‘‘mouth’’and
‘‘neck’’as literal reality for bottles, highways and the Panama Canal took it one step further and began developing bottlenecks of their own. Along with empirical facts and coherent logic, meta- phors too should be regarded as a building block of theory. A metaphor has the potential to bring new understanding to a situation, to raise new questions, and to introduce a different perspective to the discussion.
According to Rorty (1991, p. 12),‘‘there are three ways in which a new belief can be added to our previous beliefs, thereby forcing us to reweave the fabric of our beliefs and desires . . .’’These are (1) perception (functioning in service of empirical evidence), (2) inference (roughly synonymous with logical coherence), and (3) metaphor (a linguistic innovation).
[1] Perception [empirical evidence] changes our beliefs by intruding a new belief into the network of previous beliefs. For example, if I open a door and see a friend doing something shocking, I shall have to eliminate certain old beliefs about him, and rethink my desires in regard to him. [2] Inference [logical coherence] changes our beliefs by making us see that our previous beliefs commit us to a belief we had not previously held . . . For example, if I realize, through a complicated detective-story train of reasoning, that my present beliefs entail the conclusion that my friend is a murderer, I shall have to eitherfind some way to revise those beliefs, or else rethink my friendship. (Rorty, 1991: p. 12)
Knowledge building is what Rorty calls reweaving the fabric of our beliefs and desires. If limited to perception and inference, knowledge building would not entail changing the language.
Perception and inference can change the truth-value of a sentence, perhaps, but they do not add to our repertoire of sentences. To leave it at that would be to assume that the language we presently speak is all the language we will ever need. Therefore, the third way of theory building is metaphor.
Metaphor is sometimes needed to move from one perspective to another one. Talk of ‘‘policy implementation’’ entails different connotations than talk of ‘‘public administration.’’ Similarly,
‘‘public management’’ gathers in a set of ideas that varies, at least in emphasis, from ‘‘public administration.’’ Empirical evidence and logical coherence alone might not be enough to accom- plish the paradigm shift that Kuhn (1970) made famous.‘‘[T]o think of metaphor as a third source of beliefs, and thus a third motive for reweaving our networks of beliefs and desires, is to think of language, logical space, and the realm of possibility as open-ended’’ (Rorty, 1991: p. 12). With metaphor, the building of knowledge is not always a matter of fitting data into pre-established categories. Metaphor is not a proposal to systematize; rather it is‘‘a call to change one’s language and one’s life’’(Rorty, 1991: p. 13).
This account of metaphor as a third vector of knowledge is at odds with its usual definition, which is that something has, in addition to its literal sense, another possibility that is expressed by metaphor. How does metaphor count as knowledge? Let us return to a previous point and again consider the linguistic innovation:‘‘Once upon a time . . . rivers and bottles did not, as they do now, literally have mouths’’ (Davidson, 1984: p. 246 cited in Rorty, 1991: p. 13). What once was metaphor has become literal. Language changes over time. Attaching an unusual metaphor like
‘‘mouth’’ to a river becomes second nature and eventually literal and no longer ridiculous. By expanding the language in this way, new metaphors can lead to new knowledge. They can help us redescribe our beliefs. Inquiry in the social sciences is mostly a matter of reweaving beliefs and redescribing ideas, not discovering the true nature of real objects.
To summarize, one upshot of the narrative understanding of theory is that to the normal knowledge-building components of (1) empirical facts and (2) logical coherence one can add (3) metaphor. This addition recognizes the power of analogies, categories, concepts, and interpret- ations to construct the reality we take to be true. Quite frequently, the concept precedes the reality.
A female president of the United States and melting of the polar ice cap are two examples. Other times, we do not see empirical reality until a new conceptualization draws our attention to it.
Childhood obesity, corporate welfare, and bird flu are examples of facts that did not become acknowledged as such until a new conceptual category was introduced.