Lecture
The most important aspects of examining scientific research are
the internal logic of the research process (the movement
of the researcher's thought in the direction problem —
hypothesis — result of the research), the sequence of
organizational stages of the research (finding research methods and
applying them), the presentation of research results, their communication
within scholarly discourse, and their implementation in practice. Let
us begin by examining the logic of the process
of scientific research. The concept of a problem (Ancient
Greek problēma — task, assignment) has three meanings: an
obstacle in activity; knowledge of not knowing; a clash
between two non-contradictory items of knowledge about one and
the same subject. In research activity a problem represents
a question to which there is not only no
answer, but for which existing knowledge offers no ready
means of finding one. Thus in contemporary philology there
are problems of classifying words into parts of speech,
of the typology of simple sentences, and of the
positive hero in literature. At the heart of a
problem lies a contradiction between knowledge and ignorance. The
search for and formation of such a contradiction constitutes
the initial link in the movement of the researcher's
thought and serves as a sign of the emergence
of a cognitive situation. Two basic kinds of contradiction
are distinguished: 1) a contradiction between thought and reality.
Let us consider an example from research on Tuvan
folkloristics. D.S. Kuular7 notes that the traditional view of
the non-independence and non-self-sufficiency of Tuvan folklore does not
correspond to the diverse folkloric materials discovered from the
late 19th — mid-20th century. 207 Data from the
expeditions and research of M.P. Gryaznov and M.Kh. Mannai-ool
show that the origins of Tuvan folklore go
back to the 7th century BCE. Moreover, in
its genre features Tuvan folklore is close to
Turkic-Mongolian oral folk poetry, with clearly distinguishable elements
of Indo-Tibetan folklore; 2) a contradiction between thoughts.
Example: the toponymy of Western Siberia was traditionally
studied in connection with resolving the question of
origin and identifying the original places of habitation
of the peoples of Siberia (the scholarly school
of Professor A.P. Dulzon); in the 1960—1980s the
principles and methods of systemic research were extended
to the study of the toponymy of Western
Siberia (the scholarly school of Professor I.A. Vorobyova).
Here there is an evident contradiction between two
scholarly traditions: that of the mid-20th century and
the newer one of the 1960—1980s. This is
one of the cases of a contradiction between
thoughts, that is, nothing other than a contradiction
between scholarly positions, conceptions, and theories examining one
and the same object. The work involved in
posing a problem includes a number of actions:
1) formulating the problem (separating knowledge about the subject from ignorance about it);
2) construction of the problem («splitting» the problem into sub-questions, delimiting the field of study);
3) evaluation and substantiation of the problem;
4) verbal expression of the problem, the selection and creation of terminology.
Such is the typical scheme of a researcher's work with
a problem. Let us continue with the example from D.S.
Kuular's work. He formulates the problem named above as a
series of questions that simultaneously «split» it: does such a
phenomenon as Tuvan folklore exist? If so, does it constitute
an independent phenomenon? What contribution did the Tuvans make to
the general treasury of the folk art of great Asia?
How did the Tuvans borrow, use, and disseminate the creative
achievements of their historical neighbors who moved on to other
regions of Asia? In the process of resolving a problem,
the researcher does not arrive at new knowledge immediately, but
instead offers a tentative explanation 208 of phenomena. Thus research
passes through a stage of hypothetical (Ancient Greek hypothesis —
foundation, assumption) knowledge. An example of a hypothesis in philology
is the content of chapter Ten of A.S. Pushkin's novel
«Eugene Onegin». The hypothetical stage of research consists in the
search for, development of, and evaluation of a hypothesis. The
general directions for creating a hypothesis are determined by the
problem. In the example from D.S. Kuular's work, the possible
answers to the questions posed by the researcher serve as
material for formulating a hypothesis. The oral-poetic creativity of the
Tuvan people is not a primitive and imitative phenomenon, but
an independent and self-sufficient part of Central Asian folklore.
However, the substantive sources of hypotheses lie beyond the
bounds of the problem — in the characteristics of
the object of research, in the ideas, principles, and
methods of science, in research experience. Moreover, every science
possesses a distinctive «bank of hypotheses». Also important are
experience in research on related problems, creative intuition, associations,
analogies, and so on. The development of a hypothesis
passes through three main stages. At the first stage
the hypothesis arises as an unsubstantiated assumption, a guess.
It is accordingly formulated as a tentative statement: what
if...? The second stage involves substantiating the hypothesis with
factual material. By the method of observation the researcher
extracts as many facts as possible from the source
of factual material. He checks whether these facts can
be explained by the given hypothesis. If this succeeds,
the guess has a chance of turning into substantiated
knowledge; if it does not succeed (which happens when
too many facts contradict the assumption), the task arises
of correcting the guess or, if this is not
possible, abandoning it and seeking a new assumption. The
third stage — theoretical substantiation of the hypothesis, that
is, the inclusion of hypothetical knowledge into an already
existing system of knowledge — the theoretical picture of
the object of research. Philology as a body of
knowledge may reject new knowledge that does not fit
the view of the discipline's development prevailing 209 at
a given moment. Therefore it depends on the researcher
how he manages to establish connections between new knowledge
and old, between the innovative and the traditional. A
theoretically substantiated hypothesis is formulated as a system of
judgments. As a result of the work of substantiating
the hypothesis, several situations may arise: 1) the hypothesis
is substantiated and becomes a structural component of the
theory; 2) the hypothesis is substantiated on the whole,
but some of its aspects require further elaboration (there
remains a «residue» of factual material that is not
explained by the hypothesis; the terminology lacks designations for
the phenomena discovered, and so on); 3) the hypothesis
could not be substantiated (in this case there is
inevitably recourse to competing hypotheses or the creation of
new ones). Theoretical (Ancient Greek theōria — observation, research)
knowledge, from the standpoint of the system problem —
hypothesis — theory, represents a substantiated (proven) hypothesis. The
difference between a theory and a hypothesis — in
the degree of substantiation, development, and explanatory power of
the knowledge. Therefore there exists a special task of
constructing a theory as explanatory and interpretive knowledge. The
process of constructing a theory passes through two main
stages8: 1) the formation of the foundations of the
theory; 2) the construction of the «body» of the
theory. The foundations of a theory begin to form
already at the initial stage of research, in the
process of developing the problem and constructing the hypothesis.
The foundations of a theory — these are, first,
those scholarly propositions on which the researcher's own result
is built and exists; and second, facts, phenomena, and
relations between them that require theoretical explanation. These propositions
are drawn from the existing stock of knowledge about
the object under study. In studying the question of
Tuvan folklore, the following propositions serve as the most
important foundations of the theory. The creativity of the
Tuvan people is an ethnically conditioned creativity that captured
the era of the life of the Tuvan tribes
during the period of Turkic-Mongolian and Manchu-Chinese domination, and
their participation in the affairs of the tribes that
inhabited the Great Steppe. 210 Tuvan folklore has connected
and still connects around 40 Tuvan clan-tribal groups with
numerous tribes and peoples of the Asian continent, as
is attested by folkloric material on the existence of
the «Jangar» and the «Geser». The commonality of Tuvan
folklore with the folk verbal art of the peoples
of Asia rests on a nomadic pastoral-hunting way of
life, on the shamanic-Buddhist philosophical views of its creators,
and also on the commonality of the Yakut, Khakas,
Altai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other languages. The concept of
the «body» of a theory expresses the result of
mental work that the researcher intuitively senses as the
completion of the research process. The construction of the
«body» of a theory differs substantially depending on the
form of theoretical knowledge: theory proper, as the most
developed and complex form of knowledge; explanation; a new
model; a new interpretation of a known fact or
phenomenon; classification of material, and so on. In any
case, however, theoretical knowledge corresponds to a certain set
of criteria. Let us note two of the most
important: it expresses the essence of the subject and
presents it as integral knowledge. The essential characteristic of
Tuvan folklore lies in the fact that it is
not a phenomenon limited and confined by geographical boundaries,
but represents an integral historical and artistic national heritage.
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