Academic scholarship must prioritize empirical evidences

           

         Academic scholarship must prioritize empirical evidences, rationally                    justifiable and practically applicable/ implementable /useful proposals.

         These require the acknowledgement of the following:-

         “In the end nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of                 anything at all”- William James

         The preferable blue print to evaluate any subject or topic could be as                     follows.

         It is preferable to immerse any topic or subject matter, primarily and                      basically with its intrinsic elements/components/aspects/attributes intact,               into acauldron which has a mixture of all these:-

·       knowledge based analysis,

·       limited perception based on frames of reference and scales of observation,

·       skepticism ,

·       criticism,

·       intellectual scrutiny,

·       compassionate emotionalism,

·       humane socialism,

·       rational thinking,

·       contextual relevance [ which includes too many components] ,

·       traditions,

·       practical viability,

·       psychological comfort,

·       aesthetic sensitivity,

·       scientific scrutiny backed by empirical evidence,

     in certain cases universal applicability and so on

         Then with these we must churn the cauldron without clinging on to any                 particular restrictive bias based on any identity emanating from social,                  culturalor political or religious or ideological preferences.

         This process inevitably will bring out lot of outputs. We can exercise our         freedom and sometimes select and choose some of the outputs. Sometimes             the outputs will draw us. Sometimes away from all or any of our intended          searches and seeking, outside the circle of these known paradigms, almost            tangentially serendipity will drag us to an oasis of serene clarity.

         At all costs the intrinsic attributes must be the predominant factor so that          whatever is thrown into the cauldron and however it is churned, the                      ultimate output must include those attributes so that evaluation is not                     distorted or desperately doctored to fit into any predefined and expected                outcome.

         So, what pans out ultimately depends on various factors and aspects some              of which are explainable within the ken of logical and rational thinking                 but some things can also linger sometimes into territories beyond these.

         However, we must scrupulously avoid these pitfalls namely:-

         Mutilating the facts,

         Analyzing them with preconceived notions or prejudices,

         Generalizing the particular and particularizing the general,

         Approaching facts with unloving criticism or uncritical love,

         Evaluating facts with our pet isms or philosophies,

         Resorting to irrelevant statistical justifications,

         Unleashing unworkable utopia,

         Mask them with logical fallacies,

         Mute them in pleasant jargons,

         Give historical or scriptural justifications blindly,

         Comprehend with confirmation bias or pre conceived conclusions,

         Trying to over simplify the complicated and over complicate the simple                 factors/aspects,

         Rely on conjectures,

         Gamble without any rules, plans, perspectives, methods, measures etc