Quite recently, my new book, Knowledge Doesn’t Exist and Other Thoughts on Critical Thinking, was released by Cambridge University Press. The focus of the book was largely inspired by a conversation I had with a fellow researcher (in light of a previous post on this blog, where I criticised both qualitative and quantitative researchers who exclusively use one or the other, when a mixed approach is often a better strategy). I’d like to discuss that conversation here because it addressed some important implications for critical thinking.

The other researcher suggested that the methodology we use should, to a large extent, be dictated by our epistemological philosophy. For example, are you a positivist, interpretivist, a hypothetico-deductivist, a post-positivist or some other stance appearing on the list of epistemological perspectives? I imagine many readers of this blog, like myself, will be surprised by this stance. Since day one of my research methods training, I’ve been taught that it’s the research question that should dictate your methodology…

Now, I’ve come across all of these different epistemological perspectives in the past, but I’ve never really put much faith into them – don’t get me wrong, I agree with each perspective in different ways, so it’s hard to say I have no faith in them, but likewise, it’s hard to adhere to just one perspective. Like any good psychologist would question, why does it have to be one or another? Can’t it be some shade of grey? What further impacts my reluctance to take on one of these stances is that each is fundamentally flawed........

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