Nature - autonomous learning

the dis/unity of geography 203Box 4.4 ONTOLOGIES AND EPISTEMOLOGIESWhether they know it or not, everyone has ontological and epistemologicalbeliefs. Though ordinary people rarely reflect upon thesebeliefs, professional researchers tend to do so periodically, if notfrequently. It is useful for researchers to be explicit about theirontological and epistemological beliefs so that they can be scrutinisedand perhaps even challenged. Ontological beliefs specify whatis real (or what exists), while epistemological beliefs specify howwe can know reality. Broadly speaking, people who believe thatthere is a real world independent of human perception and cognitionare ontological materialists (or ontological realists). Conversely,those who – like some discursive constructionists (see Chapter3) – believe that human ideas determine what is real for us areontological idealists. Likewise, we can draw a distinction betweenontological atomists and ontological holists. The former believe thatreality is comprised of discrete parts that interact, while holistsmaintain that the operation of parts depends upon their relationshipswith all others within an integrated system. In practice, thereare many variants of materialism, idealism, atomism and holism.For instance, while some materialists believe that the non-humanworld is inherently orderly in its behaviour, others believe it isunstable and chaotic. Epistemologically, people who believe that‘seeing is believing’ are empiricists. By contrast, those who believethat much of reality is invisible to the eye (like gravity or the socialnorms that structure how men and women interact) are nonempiricists.Ontological and epistemological beliefs underpin allresearch. For instance, if one is an ontological holist then this willprofoundly affect how one classifies observed phenomena in anyinvestigation. Since one cannot readily ‘cut the biophysical worldat the joints’ (as an atomist would suppose one could), then theepistemological act of deciding what conceptual boxes to usebecomes important since these boxes may falsely separate what,ontologically, are ‘internally related’ phenomena.