Discovery

Deduction

There are at least three types of deductive discovery. For each type, deduction is the principal logical process framing the scientist's attempt to find new phenomena. Moreover, because deduction is ideational, no direct contact with people or their material culture is required. Deductive discovery is a conscious, intentional, and systematic process. The classic type, referred to here as theoretical deduction, proceeds according to standard deductive logic. In this type, the scientist strives to discover something new by deducing one or more corollaries from basic premises or propositions (e.g., boredom is a coerced condition; leisure is an uncoerced activity; therefore, boredom is not leisure).

The metaphor constitutes another type of discovery. A metaphor is not intended to represent the phenomenon under study in the same way as resulting theory will (or at least should); rather, its purpose is preliminary—to suggest, by deducing from premises of the metaphor, fruitful paths leading to discovery of the nature of that phenomenon. This process eventuates in new data, concepts, and propositions related to the phenomenon. With a metaphor, this is accomplished by orienting thought and research using one or more of the concepts comprising the metaphor, in effect converting them into what Herbert Blumer labeled as sensitizing concepts. Such concepts are heuristic; they guide open-ended discovery research [Page 221]on new groups, activities, and so on. In brief, applying metaphors is a fruitful and distinctive way of generating grounded theory.

The dialectic, fashioned by Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, is a third type of deductive discovery. In rudimentary form, it states that Social Condition A (thesis) leads to an opposite Social Condition B (antithesis), thereby creating a tension leading to its resolution in Social Condition C (synthesis). Thus, Marx theorized that capitalist exploitation of workers (A) would lead to revolution and a classless society (B) followed by dictatorship of the proletariat (C).

Induction

Discoveries can also be made by way of inductive argument, whose ambit is substantially broader and more open-ended than the closed circle of logic found at the heart of deductive argument. Inductive logic rests on comparatively free-ranging direct observations of the empirical world (e.g., people's activities, situations, groups, material culture) and the conclusions (sometimes called generalizations) inferred from these observations. There are at least four types of inductive discovery.

...