Literary research

Nathan Furr finds many reasons for doing literary look into. He summarizes these to be Experiencing the Other, nurture compassion and service, gaining brainstorm into ourselves, purpose naked as a jaybird ways of turn overing, understanding and compose more(prenominal) clearly, and reveal the joy of disco real and creation (Furr, 3). To these he excessively adds essenti altogethery, the power of literary seek to combat mis data. Generally, Furrs reasons atomic number 18 exchangeable to my own however, I would make some changes to his conclusions.Two of Furrs leases with which I unequivocally agree be that literary seek allows 1 the powerfulness of understanding and theme more clearly as well as a major reason for literary research being uncovering the joy of discovery and creation.These two reasons are of expose richness because the police detective aspect of literary research is a large calve of what makes it so appealing to me. By extension, a pile of researc h acts little cherish even if the research was standed merely out of my own curiosity because the compiling, organizing, and composition are all essential components in answering the initial question. Without the writing forcing me to synthesize the incidents I have discovered and draw coherent conclusions, the research itself as well as whatever conclusions I drew are more easily forgotten.The first reason Furr lists is experiencing the Other. While this does count homogeneous a valuable reason, I would more resemblingly phrase it as expanding ones world view. At least for me, this broader category makes more sense. In the example he gives about the man from Poland, I think not only do we get to see the world from his perspective, nevertheless through oral histories like this we gain a valuable sharpness into the time and place described. Thinking of it as experiencing the Other feels un golden to me in that it seems to sepa respect the researcher from the research subjec t, and as I think Furr would agree, that infinite is exactly what literary research often try outs to minimize.While Furrs vociferation that literary research can aid in finding raw(a) ways of thinking, I had difficulty with his example of research for buying a computer. At the end of this paragraph, he summarizes the process of research saying, We start with a b some other or question, being researching, follow leads, assemble materials, and then progress to a crop (Furr, 2). I agree that this is how research is conducted however, is that really finding a refreshful way of thinking? It seems more like collect information to form a conclusion and it should thus be labelled something more like providing information.I think this is especially true because, deflection from his example, literary research does not necessarily facilitate the discovery of new ways of thinking. I think it is possible that one could research a division and emerge with a legitimate conclusion or p roduct plainly without any new way of thinking about the problem beyond having found a satisfactory conclusion. Ideally, this would not be the case. Anyone conducting literary research would discover a new way of seeing a problem, but I think it is too broad a generality to assume that this is always true. At any rate, I think if this is rightfully what Mr. Furr is asserting, it would fit better, for me, into the expanding ones world view category.Furr likewise sees gaining insight into ourselves as another reason for doing literary research. In describing this reason, Furr states that through literary research many people seek to essentially unlocking what we have always known and affirming it to ourselves. (Furr, 2).This seems to be Furrs closely direct reference to researcher bias. I found his lack of a full discussion of this topic to be a major shortcoming of his article. True, research in it close to basic form involves uncovering information, but the worldin literary a nd historical senses as well as many othersis a very heterogeneous web of thoughts, experiences, and interpretations.I would argue that there is no one Truth, and the belief in such a thing is nave. The most obvious case would be the Bible. Many different people seek to use the Bible to support very different claims. Often passages sight are contradictory and can easily support conflicting contentions. The literary researcher does uncover information, but what is uncovered is only part of the story. Which part is uncovered is largely reliant upon the sources one utilizes.The selection of source is similarly a product of bias. For example, I would not use a Hindu newspaper, nor would I look to an un-translated Mayan text. These two can be seen as innates because of linguistic inaccessibility, but in doing research we generally gravitate toward sources with which we are comfortable whether books, popular media, scholarly articles, newspapers, oral histories, or any number of geta ble source material.Beyond comfort with sources, I think Furrs self-assertion falters in that it does not explicitly take into account that researchers find what they seek. This affirming of ones own beliefs is key to researcher bias because, for example, people who inadequacy to claim that the Holocaust never happened, will do so irrespective of any information others try to point out to them. Further, they will conduct their own research and doubtless find material that supports their conclusion, however dour that conclusion may seem to be.Furr discusses the power of misinformation, but fails to consider the fact that many people do research and come up with less-traveled conclusions that fly in the face of nearly all other findings. precisely because we know it happened, when looking at the issue of the Holocaust we can claim that people denying it existence are spreading misinformation, but with more complex issues, and issues for which there are not survivors, it becomes c lear that one persons misinformation can be anothers super researched cutting-edge discovery. It all depends on where you look and what you are hoping to find.Another of Furrs reasons for literary researchlearning compassion and serviceseems a bit optimistic to me. Of course, we would like to believe that knowledge conquers darkness, but again compassion is a highly subjective issue. Many people research literature, science, and history either explicitly in search of or resulting in reasons to assert their own transcendence and use to oppress others. One example would be people who researched, and however do research, on the biological inferiority of minorities to perpetuate and legitimize racial practices. Finding compassion in such research is difficult if not impossible.In terms of service though, I enjoyed Furrs claim that research is an ethical action. While again this statement seems a bit simplistic, I think the argument he quotes from Altick and Fenstermaker that literar y research can serve to extend the traditional boundaries of scholarly and critical interest is a reasoned one (Furr, 2). While I do find Furrs claims to be optimistic, I agree that in the best-case scenarios they are both true and of extreme value, but it is Copernican to highlight some possibilities for which his arguments do not seem to account.I do agree that there are many serious reasons both personal and social to undertake literary research. Perhaps the strongest urge for doing research is curiosity, is that so? Ill look it up. On an individual direct when someone makes a seemingly unrealistic claim, literary research is an important tool in satisfying curiosity and quelling argument.Investigating misinformation is also very valuable on a larger social level. This calls to sagacity the Program on International insurance Attitudes 2003 study that surveyed Americans to determine their rate of misperception about three issues surrounding the Gulf War and found that 80% Fo x News viewers held at least one of the misperceptions (PIPA, 13). To me, this illustrates the importance of literary research more than any other example.If one accepts information from one source uncritically, then they are completely at the tenderness of that sources biases. While I believe it is true that a researcher is limited by their own biases, at least those biases are their own. Exposure to sources with different biases is important in opening up new avenues of inquiry, but undertaking literary research is vital to locating other biases and interpreting information provided by those sources. Literary research then is the key to knowing not only ones own mind, but understanding the minds of others, and thus one of the most valuable tools anyone can put on in developing intellectually, personally, and socially.Works CitedFurr, Nathan. Literary Research The Importance of surgical procedure and Product.Kull, Steven. Misperceptions, the Media, and the War in Iraq. Pipa.com. 2 Oct. 2003. Program on International Policy Attitudes. 22 Dec. 2006 .