Why We Seek to Know What We Seek to Know, Essay Example

There is, somewhat ironically, a wonderfully easy way to respond to the query of why we seek to know what we seek to know, and it nicely relies on research circumstances.   More exactly, the question is effortless as long as we are being directed to obtain the answers desired.  There can be no mystery as to incentive when the motivation belongs elsewhere, and to an authority commanding the investigation.  Responsibility as to real purpose, then, is happily avoided and we can get to the work involved.

It is the other circumstance, that of autonomy, when this strikingly valid question demands examination.  The responsibility then belongs solely to us, and the answers take on a vast importance.  Moreover, they may prove unsettling, or certainly not as definitive as we would like.  For example, there is the very persistent human mechanism which holds that being engaged in an activity serves to justify the activity, be it research or virtually anything else.  If we commit to an undertaking, it seems reasonable to assume that we have already attached meaning to it.  This question, however, demands more, for it goes to focusing on the meaning itself, and this is where all sorts of conflicts may arise.  We then must examine priorities of thinking and feeling, as we must also reexamine our notions of our own worth.  That is to say, the question then becomes: how deserving of my efforts is this line of inquiry?  Beyond this, there remains the core inquiry of the actual value of the efforts, and this in itself is complicated by the fact that such values may often not be known until the work is accomplished.

The cycle is, if not vicious, perplexing.  This being the case, it seems that the most rational approach, then, is to first acknowledge the inherent dilemmas in attaching worth to research or effort.  The answer to the great “why” will always be, to some extent, elusive, and most certainly open to debate.   This acknowledged, one recourse is available, and it is one going to a less than scientifically valid approach.  We must ultimately answer this question by means of asking another, more visceral one. Namely: does it feel right?  In that answer will reside all anyone needs to know, before the work is undertaken.