Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Unterschied: inquiry - investigation

Kurzinhalt: I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction ... between inquiry and investigation; inquiry is the active principle. It takes one beyond whatever is given, perceived, known, ascertained

Textausschnitt: 33b I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction, at least for present purposes, between inquiry and investigation. By investigation I would mean the process that is initiated in the subject by intellectual wonder or curiosity, that methodically seeks, accumulates, classifies possibly relevant data, that gradually through successive insights grows in understanding and so formulates hypotheses that are expanded by their logical presuppositions and implications to be tested by further observation and perhaps experiment. (Fs)

33c Within this process there occur both insight and inquiry, with insight responding to inquiry, and further insight to further inquiry. Inquiry is the active principle. It takes one beyond whatever is given, perceived, known, ascertained. It does so, not by perceiving or knowing anything more, but simply by intending something more. What it intends is an unknown. By the intending it becomes a to-be-known. An unknown that is to be known may be named. In algebra it is named "x"; in physics it will be some indeterminate function such as "F (X, Y, Z, T) = O"; in common English usage it is named "nature"; so we may speak of the nature of light or the nature of life, not because we know these natures, but because we name what we would know if we understood light or life. (Fs) (notabene)

34a Now this intending is also a striving, a tending, and its immediate goal is insight. When insight occurs, the immediate goal is reached, and so the striving for insight, the tending to insight, ceases or, perhaps better, it is transformed. It becomes a striving to formulate, to express in concepts and in words, what has been grasped by the insight. Once this is achieved, it is again transformed. It becomes a striving to determine whether or not the insight is correct. (Fs)

34b Inquiry, then, and insight both occur within the larger process that is learning or investigating. Inquiry is the dynamic principle that gradually assembles all the elements in the compound that is human knowing. Among these elements insight is the most central. Like the others, insight too responds to inquiry. But it is not the total response. (Fs)

34c May I add a final word on definition? All defining presupposes undefined terms and relations. In the book Insight the undefined terms are cognitional operations and the undefined relations are the dynamic relations that bind cognitional operations together. Both the operations and their dynamic relations are given in immediate internal experience, and the main purpose of the book is to help the reader to discover these operations and their dynamic relations in his own personal experience. (Fs)