One of my abiding preoccupations is the role of imagination  in scholarly writing. To be frank, I think too much writing in the social sciences is unimaginative–sometimes, in fact, resolutely so. That is, I think some writers make an active effort to marginalize the imagination in their articles. This makes them very difficult to read.

George Orwell famously said this many years ago. Too much ideological writing is done without any clear image in the mind of the reader and therefore without leaving one in the mind of the reader. But my touchstone here is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s pregnant sentence, “We make ourselves pictures of the facts,” i.e., we imagine them.

Facts don’t make themselves known. Most of the time they don’t even impress themselves upon us very strongly. We have to go looking for them, and then we have to show them to each other. It is this showing that requires imagination. More recently, I’ve been drawn to the American poet William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All, which is a passionate, almost desperate, plea for imaginative writing. (See this post on my other blog for more.)

In the world of scholarship, I encourage writers to think of the image they want to leave in the mind of the reader paragraph-by-paragraph. That is, give yourself a whole paragraph to leave a single, perhaps somewhat complex, image in the mind of the reader. Require of yourself that you can see it yourself. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be the image of a physical fact. Drawing it might mean producing  a diagram or a graph rather than a picture; or it might involve a series of pictures (as in the story board of a film). But you should not be content with a paragraph that corresponds to no image at all.

Think of it in terms of what it takes to demonstrate that someone has understood your words. If the only possible representation of your idea is the words themselves, then only a verbatim quotation would count as a representation of your text. That’s very unsatisfying. Scholarly ideas are the sorts of thing you should be able to paraphrase, and therefore able to imagine.

A while back I wrote a post on my own blog describing my lecture to undergraduates about what they should be becoming good at at university. The goal is not just to acquire knowledge, but to become “knowledge-able”, i.e., able to know things. In short, a university education makes you a better knower. It doesn’t just stuff knowledge into your head.

A very successful university education, then, makes you a very able knower. People who distinguish themselves in this regard will be encouraged to become “masters” and then “doctors” in their field, with the hope that they will take over the function of developing the talent for knowing things in the coming generations from their elders. I know that this all sounds terribly old-fashioned and naive, but if this isn’t what it’s all about then I don’t know why anyone would bother working in a university.

It’s possible that there is a kind of “peak performance” period for scholars, just as there is for athletes and musicians. The age of this period will vary from discipline to discipline, more likely, from person to person. (The old saw is that mathematicians start getting “old” in their thirties, unlikely to make any significant discoveries thereafter, while philosophers come into their prime in their fifties.) In any case, we don’t want to get rid of knowledgeable people just because they’re not still improving. They can serve as teachers and coaches. They have an ability, a developed talent, that society has an interest in exposing young people to in order to develop theirs. In my lecture I analyze this ability into three components.

First, scholars are able to accurately and efficiently make up their minds. They can form “justified, true beliefs” in a timely and orderly manner without relying on prejudice. By using the word “timely” I’m not trying to rush them. Some beliefs take a long time to form. The scholar’s expertise is visible in the awareness he or she has of how long it will take to reach a conclusion of a particular kind or on a particular basis. And when it’s simply impossible, given a particular deadline. This will be true even where the intercession of muses or other “intuitive” imponderables is called for. Having a good working relationship with the muse, the scholar knows roughly what to expect. The competent craftsman can give you a plausible estimate.

Second, scholars are able clearly and effectively  speak their minds. To know something is to be able to hold one’s own in a conversation with another knowledgeable people. We call these people peers. Scholars don’t win every argument, but most of them are interesting, even just to watch. The arguments are supported by evidence that is valuable in its own right. The claims made are clear and important, and the scholar knows their importance. Finally, if the scholars provoke or offends, this is done intentionally, in the pursuit of truth not scandal.

Third, scholars are able to write it down. Specifically, for every thing they know, they are able to compose a coherent prose paragraph that makes a claim a provides support for it in at least six sentences and at most two-hundred words. Working from the center of their strength, under ordinary (i.e., not necessarily ideal) conditions, they can write such a paragraph in half an hour more or less at will. If we think of prose as a muscle we can say that scholars keep theirs in shape.

What I call “inframethdology”, then, is simply the development of the craft for scholarship. It’s the set of research practices and habits of mind that constitute the “scholarly imagination”  specific to a given field. The actual craft, of course, differs from field to field. But in all cases we can ask how does the scholar “know things”? How is the scholar is able to make up his or her mind, speak it, and write it down? That’s what the scholar qua scholar is good at.

Starting in October 2014*,  CBS Library will be hosting a weekly colloquium about the craft of research. The aim is to facilitate discussion of a range of topics about the nitty-gritty details of contemporary research practices. While our orientation will be very practical, we will be dealing mainly with broad aspects of research, leaving the particular methodologies of each field to be addressed more locally in the relevant research environments around CBS.

We expect to alternate between issues related to scholarly writing and issues related to library skills. Liv Bjerge Laursen will join us every other week to lead our discussion of library-related matters such as reference management, use of databases, citation analysis, and a variety of online resources. Thomas Basbøll will lead discussions about language, style, rhetoric and the broader craft of research writing. In both cases, we’ll be using a hands-on master-class format.

The sessions are open to all researchers at CBS, including PhD students. Registration is not required.

The colloquiums will run from 14 to 16 every Thursday, starting on Oct 30, 2014. Please keep posted here at the blog for announcements about topics and schedules.

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*Update: This post originally said we’d be starting in October 2015.

In the weeks to come, this blog will begin to deal with the issues related to “the craft of research”.

The name of the blog, “inframethodology”, is intended to indicate the area “beneath” or “behind” method, just at “metatheory” is generally taken to indicate something “above” or “beyond” theory.

It’s the practices that are grounded in our “care” for research that will interest us here. Things like careful note-taking, proper referencing, close reading of sources, attention to detail in note-taking, the collection and storage of data. In short, everything that ensures the quality of our research, short of those issues that properly belong to the methodologies of particular disciplines.