The Impossibility of Atheoretical Educational Science

Abstract

Atheoretical science is not merely difficult or undesirable - it 's impossible. The reasons for this impossibility center on the Meno paradox of Plato. Briefly stated the paradox says that all inquiry is impossible because we either know what we seek, in which case why search for it, or we have no idea of what we seek, in which case how could we recognize it? The way out of this paradox, first suggested by Aristotle, is to say that we have at least partial foreknowledge of the objects of inquiry. In scientific inquiry this foreknowledge comes in the guise of theory. Science without theory stumbles along blindly. A theoretical science is impossible. The attempt at atheoretical science is simply bad science - or worse.