Is There a Hope of Doing Perfect Research - Essay Example

Is There A Hope Of Doing Perfect Research? There is no hope of doing perfect research (Griffiths, 1998, p.97). It sounds pessimistic. What is hope bythe way? Hope as they say is most needed when all everything is hopeless. Hope becomes necessary when there seems to no way out in a situation. That is why, people say,” hope against hope”. Hope therefore looks at hopeless things with optimism. It transcends what is physically impossible. Hope therefore gives meanings. Christianity becomes meaningful because of the blessed hope of Christian for the second coming of Jesus Christ. In the secular realm, people in the society desire for truth and justice and to attain the same there must be belief in attaining so and in there is belief there is hope. It would be wrong to say for example that Justices of the US Supreme Court to say they believe that there must be justice but they must not hope that just justice will be perfect. Given such perspective about hope, let us rephrase the question: Is there hope of doing perfect research? into “ Is there positive optimism of doing a perfect research? This second statement seems to have taken a different meaning from the original.. That happened after using the word “hope” in a context where it could possibly be used. Proceeding therefore with the second, question, we could answer in the affirmative because the there is really positive optimism for perfect research. That seems to be an observable reality. If there is no hope or if there is no positive optimism for perfect research it would hard to believe the ever changing technology as a result of the hope of having a better product, hope of a better society. People have ideals which may include ideal for democracy, freedom and justice.. In the physical real, people want quality product and quality service. But one would readily object: how could there be a perfect research? One would say, “We are not in heaven, we are here on earth where the things the we have are imperfect. We commit errors, we bungle investigations, and we miscalculated the terrorist. We can even create something to prevent another hurricane from occurring. We cannot prevent people from dying despite the advances in technology. America could not contain the mind of the terrorist who planned the September 11 attacks. If there is perfect research we could have avoided all these things.” So those arguments appear too difficult to explain. But if we have to repeat the question again: “Is the there a positive optimism of doing a perfect research. then we could actually restate the objections as follows: Yes, we are not in heaven, yes we are here on earth but we could hope to make things perfect the next time around. Yes, we commit errors, we bungle investigations, we miscalculated the terrorist but we can always have a hope of avoiding these things the next time around. Yes, we cannot even create something to prevent another hurricane from occurring but we are hoping to come up one with a technology of how to avoid the damage of another calamity. Yes, we cannot prevent people from dying despite the advances in technology, but we are hoping to come up with a perfect research how to minimize number of deaths. Yes, America could not contain the mind of the terrorist who planned the September 11 attacks, but it hopes to one day arrest the man or stop terrorism. What we could observe is the change in the tone of the language by restating the same question and accepting out limitation of our humanity but hoping or believing that from our imperfection we could at least approximate the reality of our finite existence. Hope is a virtue as we said earlier; it has no meaning without first acknowledging hopelessness. So there is nothing with hoping against a hopeless case. The bible has a better contextual use of the term hope in Hebrew 11:1, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  If faith is believing sure of what is hope for then hope would appear to mean as a condition of faith, meaning it is hard to believe without having “believed” or expected with confidence first. It could mean that hope is the foundation of all researches because one will find that which he will not expect with confidence something good. Applying the resolution of the statement with qualitative researches on “Class strategies and the education market by Ball S J and Education and the working class. The middle classes and social advantage by Jackson B and Marsden D (1962) “, we posed with question again: Is there hope for doing perfect research. A pessimist would say how could there perfect research when there is when have different groups of students. The first groups are well financed while the other groups are not. The first group is rich students because they belong to upper class while the others are not. If there is no equality of opportunities and resources how could there be hope for doing perfect research. He would further say, much a poor man wanted to know more but his resources could not allow him, what will he do? The inequality is further supported Carole Leathwood (http://tre.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/2/1/31) in his work entitled A Critique of Institutional Inequalities in Higher Education (or an Alternative to Hypocrisy for Higher Educational Policy) when she said: “The higher education sector in this country is highly differentiated, with high status, research-led elite institutions at the top of the university hierarchy, and newer universities, with far lower levels of funding and prestige, at the bottom. The extent of this differentiation is illustrated by an analysis of six universities at different ends of this spectrum. It also becomes apparent that the student profiles of these institutions are very different, with privately educated, while, middle class students particularly over-represented in the elite universities, and working-class, minority ethnic, and to some extent, women students concentrated in those institutions with far lower levels of funding and prestige.” The author was really clear with the reality of the differentiation that one could be concerned with the output in research studies. If such studies are real and not acted upon how could opportunities of perfect research could come. She expressed disappointment that the situation could be worse because of seeming perpetuation of the inequalities. But the good thing about hope is that there is really hope. This manifested by the author when and the paper concluded with a call for a more socially just and equitable future for the higher education sector. Some people also view things negatively but they still have hopes. Another example is article in the internet which says: “There is no perfect legal research tool. The number of web pages on the Internet already estimated as exceeding one billion. The number of law sites, the complexity of their content, and their rapid expansion, makes a comprehensive catalog for law impossible. The best Internet-wide search engines only manage to make less than half of these web pages searchable, and it is completely unknown what percentage of web pages relating to law are searchable. But the author did have a recommendation that indicates hope saying: “….any research strategy has to start with these two points: • World Law/DIAL is just one good starting point for legal research, but should not be the only tool used to find websites/ • Always use both search engines and catalogs, because each has strengths that complement the other.” (http://www.worldlii.org/catalog/publications/guides/user/user-4_.html) Still another example is an article by James L. Gattuso where he said that there is no perfect solution to terrorism. He continued saying: “Terrorism continues to pose very real threats — in many forms and from many quarters. Washington can and must act to counter them. But lets not delude ourselves: No plan and no amount of resources can insulate us from all possible dangers. Pursuing a solution that seems to be perfect on paper may, in reality, leave all of us less secure. There is no set recipe for devising an effective air security strategy. Absolutes do not apply here.” But he did not run out of approach to the problems when he made recommendations which include: ”• First, recognize the world outside aviation. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been a disproportionate focus on threats to aviation security. While these threats remain substantial, we cannot allow them to blind us to other vulnerabilities, such as those involving nuclear power plants or cargo containers. Solutions, too, may best come from outside the aviation box. Some argue, for instance, that the best defense against shoulder-fired missiles is not installing unproven technology on aircraft, but increasing efforts to contain these weapons in the first place.”( http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed091203b.cfm) As we could see in the above examples, there are realization of lack of perfections but they we quick to have solutions hence there is really much to react upon when we are asked the question: “is there hope of doing a perfect research” Our imperfections keep us hoping to be perfect, even in research. References: 1. (http://tre.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/2/1/31) 2 (http://www.worldlii.org/catalog/publications/guides/user/user-4_.html) 3. (http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed091203b.cfm) 4. Holy Bible, New International Version, The NIV Rainbow Study Bible , Rainbow Studies, Inc., Oklahoma, U.S.A. Read More