Academic research: musings

[Bob A]

Personally, I like pictures. Worth a thousand words, or so I was told.

Being able to make a mental tie-in between an antique weapon and the person or persons who might have utilised it adds a certain depth to its appreciation, expands one's visual horizon, and stimulates curiosity.

The worlds depicted in these old photos no longer exists, and visual imagery is a fine way of gaining insight into experiences no longer available. Studio photos are less valuable, but still contain an element of the times, and as such serve to cast some illumination on a bygone period.

Narrowly-focused research is obviously of value, but such methods by their nature exclude much valuable context.

[ariel]

The value of portraits and photos is unquestionable, although some questions will always be present. But they are only a part of a research process. Having agreed on that point we can move further.
What are your opinions on the bulk of my "musings"?

[Ren Ren]

Old photos are staged a little less than 100%. Probably, we can talk about reportage only with the invention of Kodak mobile cameras.
But old photos can tell a lot about what people wanted to show as important and noteworthy in their value scale. And also to convey ideas about fashion and beauty of those times. If a researcher adheres to a conservative tradition, then photography is for him a part of iconography. I think that everyone present here vividly remembers the lively discussions that turn into heated debates regarding certain ancient graphic images or ancient sculptures. I see no reason why old staged photos should be judged differently than graphics, painting and sculpture. Their objectivity is largely illusory.

[A. G. Maisey]

Ariel, you have asked what we think of your musings.

My opinion must be a non-academic opinion, since I am not now, and never have been an academic, but my short opinion is that , yes, I think you're close enough to reality to be taken seriously.

However, if I consider a matter I go about it in a slightly different way. I try to frame the question I want answered, this might take a long time. When I have the question clear --- or maybe "clear enough" is better --- I then try to identify my objective.

All this takes a very long time, and really, it never stops, its always there niggling away in the back of my mind, and that objective can always be amended as enquiry proceeds.

When I have what I think might be a satisfactory objective I then start to do things that might get to a point where I start to produce what I like to think of as "good ideas". To get to the "good idea" point can take a very long time, it is mostly thinking and with fairly random inputs. In one case it took me around 20 or so years of this before these "good ideas" more or less solidified into something that I thought I might be able to make into a hypothesis.

For me, this is the point where I start to look at supportable evidence that can contribute to the hypothesis. I'm not talking testing and supporting argument here, I'm talking evidence in one form or another that can contribute to, let us say, a story line.

I doubt that I've ever taken things further than that. For me, the hypothesis is sufficient. Others can, if they wish, prove or disprove the hypothesis. I tend to be a little bit dubious about theories, especially if those theories begin to be accepted as truth. You can construct a theory, and by clever argument, you can get a lot of people to accept that theory, but sooner or later the Matchlup/Arbesman effect kicks in, you look back and you find you spent a whole lot time on something that was either not relevant, or straight out wrong.

There are a lot of ways to look at that wasted time, and most of these ways present a much more pleasant outcome than 5 minutes of the half-life of fame.

In my non-academic opinion, I feel that the most important, and also the most difficult thing is to ask a relevant question.

Answers can be pretty easy to construct, relevant questions can be exceedingly difficult to construct.

[Jim McDougall]

Interesting approach to the philosophical perspectives in research.
I think questions are inherent to research, investigation, and study. I am by far no academic, but have always been curious, so questions are always there.

If I may use the 'khanjarli' case, which apparently has prompted this editorial thread, for an example.

The question was simple, asking for help finding an individual actually wearing a khanjarli dagger, distinctive for its ivory lunette pommel, and having a recurved blade common to several Indian dagger forms.

It became readily apparent that the request for this subject matter may have to do with (as often the case) a semantic issue with terms applied to various weapon forms. This seems to have been illustrated in the reference to these type daggers in Egerton, with contradictory classification captions also listed.

Further research in Elgood revealed this was indeed a case of a variation of another dagger form, chilanum, but with the lunette pommel.

It seems that in most cases, writers covering a certain topic like to add illustrations to better convey descriptions and provide imagery that the reader can connect to the text.

The photographic image of a weapon being worn by an individual, just as art work depicting same, is not always 'proof' but does provide some context.
The work of AVB Norman, on rapier and smallsword hilts, is based largely on forms of hilts as found in portraits mostly, relies on the fact that most portraits are painted in a time frame of the individuals life. In these cases, persons posing typically were particular about their personal weapons being used, not someone elses.

In other types of art, Rembrandt for example, Biblical scenes were embellished by weaponry, often exotic, known in the Dutch context of the time these were painted. The information useful is more for the study of the foreign weapons of the time of the painting than the Biblical context.

A great book titled "After the Fact" is about historical detection, and some great examples of what a painting of an American Indian warrior by George Catlin can tell the investigator about the figure posing, and the items they are wearing etc. There are surprising elements revealed, sometimes an influence of another work, and adjustments of embellished ornaments.

I guess we could go on forever with examples and questions, reasons, and all these things related to research, but it comes down to getting evidence, proper evaluation of it, and presenting it accordingly. The idea is to be sure to apprise the reader of what is being shown, and qualify any aspects that might be in question. Do not hesitate to be transparent and show other sides to the material being shown. Let the reader decide which is more viable.

Musings are personal, and not of much use to most others, as everyone has their own, regarded as thoughts and ideas. But nothing wrong with expressing ideas. These are what is good about discussion, objective and unbiased, flowing constructively.

[Bob A]

The question of the value and nature of research, as applied to representative depictions of weapons for example, is more complex than it might appear.

Research, embodying observation leading to formulating a question as a hypothesis, and subsequently devising a method of testing the hypothesis, is a focused and necessarily narrow approach as a tool for expanding knowledge. A body of prior knowledge is implicit in its usage, distilled down from a much broader palette of information and observation: hence "re-search" is derived from "search". Medical research is science; the practice of medicine is aptly called an art.

One can speak of historical research, but this is dependent on possibly fallible and certainly biased information; it lacks the rigor of hard science, and deals with issues and information that is more vague and suspect as one goes further into the past. The farther we depart form that which can be measured and quantified, the farther we are separated from what might be described as "truth" or perhaps "reality."

Mathematics exists as pure abstraction, which nevertheless can map congruencies or corepondences in what we see as "reality," and has in fact been the precursor of the real, as mathematical abstractions have led physical science into the discovery of the hidden realities of the physical world. So-called "pure" mathematics has been found useful as a descriptor of phenomena completely unsuspected or unknown to the mathematician engaged in symbol manipulation for its own sake.

It seems therefore that the scientific method is an exquisite tool for seeking answers to problems, or questions, if one prefers, but a broad and global scope encompassing seemingly unrelated phenomena and discovering implicit patterns, which might ultimately provide scope for research, might better be viewed as "art."

Arts and sciences inform and cross-pollinate each other, and both would appear necessary to the process of discovery; essentially search and research are complementary tools in this endeavor.

Or so my musings would lead me to opine, when considering the musings of others on the topic.

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Bob A

It seems therefore that the scientific method is an exquisite tool for seeking answers to problems, or questions, if one prefers, but a broad and global scope encompassing seemingly unrelated phenomena and discovering implicit patterns, which might ultimately provide scope for research, might better be viewed as "art."

I completely agree!