How Relational and Contextual Reasoning Can Foster Research across Boundaries
It is not infrequently assumed (at least tacitly) that boundaries between research domains result from their incompatibility, incommensurability or any other insurmountable difference. While there are such cases, the view taken here is that in other cases (to be delimited), generalising this assumption is not justified by the actual state of affairs but results from using a non-appropriate form of thought with its underlying logic. Specifically, Piagetian formal operations with their black-and-white-only binary logic lead to erecting frontiers and coming down hard on one side or the other because any other option is forbidden by this logic. The explicit exclusion of a third possibility (tertium non datur – grey not admitted) is prescribed as a condition for a statement to be deemed valid. In contrast, in appropriate cases, Relational and Contextual Reasoning (RCR) leads to an understanding that findings from two or more domains considered as “mutually excluding each other” by binary logic have to be included in a particular way in order to come to the best available explanation of a given state of affairs, event, and so on. This applies specifically to physical, biological, and psycho-socio-cultural as well as spiritual dimensions, theories, worldviews, disciplines and paradigms, research questions, themes, and programmes.
The core of RCR consists of applying a logic with three “truth values” compatible, incompatible, and noncompatible. Compatible means that two or more dimensions, entities, events, explanations, theories are simultaneously present/valid, incompatible that they are never present/valid simultaneously, and noncompatible that they need to be looked at in different contexts, apply to different times or the like but are all required for a satisfactory description or explanation. An example would be the explanation of the performance of a top basketball player in terms of native endowment (nature) and exercising (nurture). His helpful height is very largely due to his native endowment; his actual being in excellent form is above all due to exercising during the last several weeks.
Keywords: Boundaries between research domains, appropriate logic, Relational and Contextual Reasoning (RCR), thought forms
