Analysis

According to the prevailing definition, analysis is a process that involves breaking something up into simpler or component parts. Indeed, the word analysis derives from the Greek ana for up and lysis for loosening or separation. But analysis can also be conceived as the search to determine prior principles, beginning from what is known—a conception with roots in ancient geometry and with purchase in academic philosophy. Analysis can be contrasted with its converse, synthesis, which is the process of joining parts or elements together to create a more unified result. Both synthesis and analysis are directed toward the ends of elucidation; through analysis, that which is being analyzed becomes better or more fully understood.

Analysis is a fundamental mode of inquiry and is applicable without restriction; one can conceivably analyze anything. As a result, it occurs throughout lay and specialized academic contexts. In their daily lives, people regularly engage in analysis, analyzing the texts they read or watch, the events they attend, the words, deeds, and behaviors of other people, and so on, discerning component parts of larger wholes. Similarly, scholars employ analysis across a wide range of academic contexts, including the sciences, social sciences, arts, business fields, and in math and the humanities, where it is a basic building block of intellectual pursuit. Scholarly analysis is generally distinguished from lay analysis by a greater degree of rigor and formalization, though the extent to which it is either depends on the particular discipline and method.

As a decompositional process, analysis includes both descriptive and pattern-seeking activities. As descriptive, analysis involves identifying the parts of a whole and providing an account of the relevant features of those parts, in some greater or lesser degree of detail. As a result, it is closely tied [Page 27]to observation; and the observation that drives analysis can involve any of the senses: visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile, or olfactory. Moreover, in order to facilitate analysis or, in some cases, even make it at all possible, one might utilize instruments to augment one or more of the senses. The analysis of physical entities or qualities, for examples, often involves the use of instruments or tools. But perhaps more often than being purely descriptive, analysis also entails the search for patterns. Breaking a larger and more complex whole into smaller and more elementary parts brings the interactions between those parts into focus. And in analyzing, one classifies and groups, identifying relationships and drawing conclusions about them.

Analysis is a comprehensive term that refers to a highly generalized activity, which can be actualized in innumerable different ways. For example, analysis can proceed at any level of abstraction. While a biologist might probe a tangible organism in order to analyze its concrete parts, philosophers use conceptual analysis to examine thoroughly abstract concepts like truth and knowledge. Levels of granularity also vary widely; coarse-grained macro-analyses assess relatively large-scale components, while fine-grained micro-analyses consider relatively small ones. One can even analyze analyses, as is the case in a meta-analysis. Indeed, there are innumerable different approaches and/or specific formalized methods one can employ in order to analyze a target of interest, some of which are outlined in the subsequent sections of this entry.

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