Junaid Alam

Victoria Gateworth

11 May 2011

There is no hope of doing perfect research (Griffith 97). Do you agree?

When investigated closely, the answer to whether a perfect research is possible or not lies in

the very definition of research and the answer is ‘No’. Research means to inquire and

investigate the accessible observations and information more deeply to broaden the

understanding of a certain subject by fresh interpretations (Research) and to find newer ways

that could extend the scope and credibility of the existing knowledge. This definition regards

the essential nature of the research that humans are capable of: they depend on a priori

information and resources of knowledge to investigate it further. This is what draws the whole

pattern of human history—knowledge has evolved and has not sprang out of nowhere or never

has come to a halt by some sense of irrevocable completeness. We may like to systematize our

argument by positing two very important factors that indicate toward the impossibility of a

perfect research: human rational process and the historical facts about how knowledge has

evolved.

“The only thing we know is that we know nothing”. – Leo Tolstoy

A little psychological analysis of human rationality suggests that humans can only

construct their thoughts on the foundations of the information that they have at hand. They

can be intuitive but even then they can hardly go beyond the landscape of experience. Even the

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most intuitive ideas in the history of mankind have been generally comprehensible, which

indicates the inherent finitude of human intellectual capacities as well as the limits of

experience in which those capacities have to develop. Theories are fabricated on the basis of

assumptions that are treated as established facts. Ideas are born from the union of various

other ideas. Different fields of human activity come together to create multidisciplinary and

even profound avenues of research. All of this indicates the same pattern: the necessity for

something to start with. This pattern leads to the conclusion that if human intellectual

capability is limited both in its flight and experience and the information available always

incomplete and to a degree uncertain, the product of a research endeavor cannot be perfect.

And this is what is also reflected in the history of development of recorded human knowledge.

When we investigate the history of the development of knowledge in its different forms,

all we can make out is a pattern that connotes evolution and a gradual accumulation of

information on a variety of fields, ranging from social sciences to biological and physical

sciences. Even the most definite forms of knowledge – that is the physical sciences – have only

managed to evolve with passing years. Neither could it be discovered out of nothing, nor did it

come to a point of immovable certainty—knowledge kept expanding and even reforming itself,

changing earlier opinions and theories with what befitted the human experience more. And,

after all that, knowledge has only started proving itself more uncertain. What is definite is only

that had perfect research been possible, knowledge could not have expanded and developed

itself. This can be proven with the help of examples from various areas of research.

Extensive research has been done regarding the ideas of evolutionism and creationism

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and has yet been unable to produce an irrefutable conclusion except that the evidence for both

the schools of thought has not been ample. There have been considerable advances in the

favor of biological evolutionism even in the fields of linguistics and anthropology and very

plausible objections made by the creationists (Wilkins: “How to be Anti-Darwinian”) but the

limits of human experience – its inability to explain metaphysical tendencies of human mind on

one hand and its incapacity to prove the doctrine of creationism on the other – have always

hampered the passage to a research that could give perfect and absolute answers. This

indicates how the limitations of our knowledge can kill any hopes of doing perfect research.

As an instance of a research that was believed to be perfect but later turned out

otherwise, we may consider the theory of gravitation. Newton’s laws of gravity were only

capable of explaining only the phenomena that were observable in older days, e.g. planetary

motion. Only later it became clear in the theory of general relativity that, although Newton’s

laws were good enough, they were not perfect (Halliday). As the reach of human experience

expands further, we cannot be sure if there are more adjustments to be made. This example

shows how the scope of human intuition and experience has become increasingly profound

with time and can only continue to do so. This again shatters the possibility of perfect research.

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Works Cited

Halliday, David, Robert Resnick, and Kenneth S. Krane. Physics v. 1. New York: John Wiley &

Sons. 2001. Print.

"Research." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web.

10 May 2011.

The Purdue OWL. Purdue U Writing Lab, 2010. Web. 10 May 2011.

Wilkins, John. “Varieties of Opposition to Darwinism”. How to be Anti-Darwinian. TalkOrigins

Archive, 21 Dec. 1998. Web. 10 May 2011.

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