Science, Knowledge and the Logic of Inquiry

Research is disciplined curiosity: the systematic, self-correcting pursuit of answers whose defining feature is that it can prove itself wrong. Before methods come the epistemological foundations — how research knowledge differs from authority, intuition and tradition, and what makes a question scientific at all.

Key Concepts

• Ways of knowing compared: tradition, authority, intuition, personal experience — versus science's systematic, empirical, self-correcting method
• Science's hallmarks: empirical observation, replicability, falsifiability (Popper) — a claim no evidence could refute is not scientific
• Deduction (theory → hypothesis → observation) and induction (observation → pattern → theory) — research cycles between them
• Basic vs applied research: knowledge for understanding vs knowledge for action — Nepal's development sector lives in applied
• Paradigms beneath methods: positivism (one measurable reality), interpretivism (realities constructed in meaning), pragmatism (whatever answers the question)
• Theory's role: not decoration — theories generate hypotheses, organise findings and travel between contexts
• Variables vocabulary: independent, dependent, moderating, mediating, extraneous — the grammar of every design

In Practice

Exam bedrock: falsifiability questions, deduction-induction identification, and paradigm matching (survey with statistics → positivist; depth interviews on lived experience → interpretivist). These distinctions open nearly every methodology paper.

Try It Yourself

Take three claims you have heard recently (one social, one health, one educational) and test each: is it falsifiable? what observation would refute it? Then classify one published Nepali study you can find as basic/applied and positivist/interpretivist with one line of evidence.