Reflections on Theme 2 – Theory

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During our second week, and third seminar, the theme was ”theory” and what is included and not included in the concept of theory.

Before going into this week’s theme I thought I had a pretty good idea of what theory was, but the more I read about it the more confused I got, or at least in the beginning. Even going into the seminar I wasn’t sure I’d fully understood the concept completely. I did however feel that I got a better understanding during the seminar when we were able to discuss it more deeply.

Something that I learned that I hadn’t considered before was what defines a “good” theory and what’s a “bad” theory.  I also realized that the view of what theory is that I had before was more of the common use of the word and not the research and academic definition. Meaning that when we use the word “theory” in our daily language it doesn’t correspond to the specific definition of what a theory is that is being used in the academia.

Theme 2

1.              Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.

Theory can be defined in a lot of ways. According to the dictionary it could mean “a mental view” or “contemplation”, a “ conception or mental scheme of something to be done”, for “the method of doing something”. A normal view of theory is to see it as a way of providing explanations and predictions but also to be testable.  Theories can also be viewed as universal statements, where the statements are tested against observations of what happens in the real world. However theory itself is not to be confused or mixed with results, references or data of research. The word theory is often overused in a way that it’s sometimes almost becomes meaningless in its context. Since the description is so diverse there is a lack of consensus what theory really is and therefor how to use theory in a right and “strong” way. To have a strong theory it’s important to ask why curtain data occurred or why particular findings were important for the result.

As an example of showing where strong theory is needed I want you to look at this “Fanta commercial”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5rMBvuJMM

Here is a great example of where the data collected would show that there is correlation between people drinking Fanta and having bad haircuts. However the data itself would not say anything about what is causing the other, therefor only using the data would possible come to the wrong conclusions. One conclusion could for example be that drinking Fanta leads to your hair falling off. Here there should be different kinds of theories applied. One theory could be that there are enzymes in Fanta that makes your hair fall off. Theories that are looking into more specifics of where the data came from and why, is in this case essential. In this case the explanation turns out to be dependent on a third part. There is a middle link connecting the two phenomena, which is an almost blind hairdresser who gives out free Fanta to everyone getting a haircut. Only collecting the data that “people with bad hair drink Fanta” would never in itself reveal the real reason for why this is true. Strong theory is grounded on underlying processes so as to understand systematic reasons for a particular occurrence or nonoccurrence.

2.              Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

I chose the article “Visual Methods for Analyzing Time-Oriented Data”. The article uses a design and action theory type according to Gregor’s definition of this theory type. The article analyzes different visual methods that have been used to previously visualize data but argues that the time aspect hasn’t been fully looked at and that this parameter has to be taken in account when developing new frameworks and methods. I found that the ground for their theory was well discussed and also why this was important to look at. The theory is also close connected to the EP theory which goes deeper into the understanding of when, why, how, where and what will be.

3.              Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories

Dealing with a lot of theories, which I found was the case in my paper, it can become almost a bit to much theory based. A lot of the theories used are also based on previous research and their theories and this makes it even harder to distinguish what theories lead to other theories, especially for the design theory method which rely on “what is to become” more than “why something is becoming”.

Reflections on Theme 1 – Research Publications/Theory of Science

During this introduction week we started by having one seminar about research publications. This seminar also familiarized us a bit more with the topics in the class and we decided on the groups for the project as well. The research papers that were presented varied a lot and it became even clearer to me that “media technology” is a broad research area. Even though most papers were in some way related to social media and social networks there were also other papers with a more technical approach, like computer graphics, simulation, visualization etc. I think it is a good thing that we’re finally getting to focus a bit on what research areas there are and how to search in journals and papers after articles related to curtain topics and areas.

One thing that I’ve noticed that I believe is a bit confusing is the value of the impact factor. I believe that this number varies a lot also regarding to research areas. A specific impact factor in physics doesn’t necessarily stand for the same quality as the same impact factor in chemistry. Since media technology is a fairly new topic and subject I would want to know where media technology is on this impact factor scale as well.

During our second seminar (with Leif Dahlberg) we spent most of the time discussing Bertrand Russell’s book “The Problems of Philosophy”. I had a really hard time understanding the concepts of philosophy while reading the book, but it made more sense after discussing the questions in small groups. I still find philosophy rather complicated and it definitely brings up a new way of thinking that I’m not used to. However, I found it much easier to deal with the different theories and ideas connected to the subject when discussing it in the group.

I wish we had spent a little more time on the connection between engineering and philosophy. Even though most time was spent on questions like “what is knowledge?” I still didn’t really grasp the connection to engineering in a sense that philosophy could be a helping tool for engineers.

However, I did noticed that when I was reading a proposition about “innovation and research initiatives in the Stockholm region” and they discussed the importance of keeping Stockholm on top as a “knowledge-city” I found myself pausing for a minute… 

Theme 1

The IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics is a journal that present important research results and state-of-the-art seminal papers within subjects related to computer graphics and visualization techniques, systems, software, hardware, and user interface issues. (Impact factor 2.215)

Visualization Rhetoric: Framing Effects in Narrative Visualization

The article discusses the complexity of visualizing data. How social and cultural norms affect the end-users understanding and interpretation of the visualization, and also how important the creators task is to design an objective visualization without ambiguity issues. The important task of deciding what to include and what to leave out creates a lot of questions regarding the creator’s objectivity. To deal with all these influences there has to be strategies, which are discussed as rhetoric techniques, objective ways of dealing and handling with visualized data. The contribution of this article is to present these techniques and categorize them so that it makes it easier for the end-user to, in a critical way, look at narrative visualizations. It also explains that it's not only the visualization itself that has to be reviewed but in what context the visualization is meant to be used. Questions like who is the audience and what is the purpose of the visualization were explained and discussed. In the beginning of the article there are a lot of references to "InfoVis" but no real explanation of what it is. It kind of just assumes that the reader knows. They could have explained that it is a toolkit to create interactive data visualizations.

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russell defines “sense-data” as things that are immediately known to us, such as colors, sounds, smells, and so on. This data gives us a sort of immediate sensation of how things are and appear to us; however, having a sensation of a color is not the same as the color itself. The color itself, together with things such as tables and other surroundings that we get a sensation of, is in Russell’s book referred to as a “sense-datum”, not to be mistaken with his definition of “sense-data”. 

Russell introduces these different notations to help in answering two questions related to sense-data and sense-datum. In his questions he is asking whether tables exist or not and what the sense-data is and is not telling us. He then also discusses what consequences this brings to the answers.

(1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?

2. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

A proposition assigns curtain properties to a specific object. Russell also says that we can’t understand a proposition if we are not fully acquainted of all the constituents of the proposition. One example of a proposition could be “Bertrand Russell was a philosopher”.

A statement means something involving a description, which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.

3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A definite description is a description that denotes only one singular object. This object is the nature of our knowledge however, we are not acquainted with the object. Phrases of the form “the so-and-so” is what Russell defines an object with a “definite description” unlike an “ambiguous description” of an object which is on the form “a so-and-so”.

4. In chapter 8 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 9 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

One problem that Russell’s addressing is that a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premisses from which it is deduced are true.

Another point that Russell addresses is that we by no means easily can discover criterions for intuitive beliefs, which leads Russell to a conclution that all our knowledge of truths is infected with some degree of doubt, and a theory which ignores this fact would be plainly wrong.

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