Positivism and Phenomenology

It seems to me that in social sciences, the two contrasting methods of research, namely: positivistic and phenomenological, are inseparably one or cannot be divorced from each other, but each works in different ways.  What I have in mind is that if one is using phenomenological methods and come up with essences of the original experience, he could validate the formulated essences using positivistic methods.  It is a cyclic process, since one could not only end up with meaning to a particular experience, but also validate that meaning using positivistic method.  In a sense, validation of meaning is simply proving that the formulated meaning is universalizable.  (I have encountered this term when reading a book of a certain author; in the book he cited (Gadamer or Habermas) who coined this term.)

In doing so, it is a fulfillment of Husserl’s phenomenological method, since in my opinion, Husserl’s phenomenological method is a vicious cycle of finding the essence of the whole field of experience. One is going to arrive at the essence of the experience by using the steps of Husserl’s phenomenological methods, as follows:

a.      Epoche – bracketing of natural attitude, and see the original experience with “new eyes;”

b.      Eidetic Reduction – reducing the original experience into its essence

But, a researcher has to be careful in arriving at the essence, since essence as Husserl perceived it, is the invariant of the experience.  In my mind, the invariant is something unchanging within the whole field of one’s experience or the whole field of common experience.

                                  

In my opinion, to arrive at something universalizable is to utilize the positivistic method.  What I have in mind when talking of positivistic method is the quantitative research method.  In so doing, we try to quantify the meaning we formulate from the original experience.  In quantifying it, we may use self-made questionnaire or a standardized questionnaire.  This is to prove that there is something universalizable from the essence.

In this regard, the idea of essence is neither in Aristotelian sense nor Husserlian sense.  Essence is no longer seen as invariant or the unchanging in the experience but simply as a structure common in the experience.  Essence is not inherent in the phenomenon of one’s experience.  Essence is something structural or simply appears as a common structure of one’s experience. 

This structural form is not also understood in Kantian sense, which is something inherent in one’s mind.  This structural form is rather dependent on conditions existing in the perceiving subject and conditions existing in the phenomenon itself.  (In this sense, I am borrowing the idea of Lonergan’s idea of insight, but I need an exhaustive study of Lonergan’s book, entitled Insight.)

The idea of universalizability coincides with Lonergan’s epistemological stance.