Scholarship is to be analyzed in competing contexts. It is a search for truth, and is most supported in the scientific context when there is hard (agreed upon) natural evidence verifying conclusions. It is presumed to be most honored when it uncovers information, or offers something that hitherto has not been found or recognized. It presumes that the researcher is intrepid, in that he/she has been painstaking to find evidence, to verify hypotheses, to justify ultimate firm observations, suggesting belief and action. Candidates for Ph. D. degrees are often asked what they found in their research that added to the store of knowledge. Hopefully there is something more than the already-known information of what has gone before. This is not to say that replication is an unworthy effort, but a true scholar wants to be objective in views about what has been done, perhaps what yet needs to be done, and find something that may not have been known. In all this, the working scholar reveals the understanding of projected theory, relevant experimentation, evidence and logical conclusions. The conclusions are statements of findings and their meaning. If the hypothesis with which the researcher began is found to be wrong, the scholar issues a null hypothesis statement. Whatever the evidence proves, it does not prove what was believed to be the case (the hypothesis) at the outset of the study. A fresh approach needs to be found, perhaps a different thesis.
Scholarship that involves only the laws of nature and the elements is highly regarded because it has high degree of reliability. It justifies itself with ready replication. Once the basic evidence is found there is confidence in conclusions, even when the conclusions must be amended in this or that way to accommodate new evidence or insight. This comforting procedure makes many scientist scholars a bit skeptical of other scholarship forms. They are aided in their perceptions by the follies of those who do not follow the objectives of an orderly treatment based on evidence that can be checked. Scholarship follows the evidence. There is a feeling that one must follow the natural, and that it is folly to add to hard evidence.
There is a scholarship that is more difficult to apply than that of the pure sciences. The processes of this other scholarship are presumed to be so similar to the methods of the physical sciences that they (social sciences) are expected to be evaluated for reliability. Religion, right and/or wrong belongs in this search for personal/social truth. The marvelous research in the physical sciences impacts social sciences, and insists on honesty related to it, but the physical scientists may miss the high number of variables related to the human experience, about which the pure sciences have little or no criteria for judgment or conclusion. The social scholar sometimes faces the prejudice of those who find no other truths than are found in pure science, as the pure scientist may be prejudiced against the facts of social science. Truthful conclusions for social science may be more difficult to discover, and even more difficult to apply effectively than the conclusions of pure science (using hard physical evidence). What is good theory and conclusion for one culture may not work at all in another. Many of the wars of the world that lead to the mass murders of armies relate to this last statement. Currently much of the tension of the world is related to the differences between Christian perceptions and Islamic perceptions of right and wrong. Scholarly studies of these perceptions, evidences, factors, practices, results, may impact both camps of beliefs so to lessen problems of hatreds, and other negatives, and build peace, and other affirmatives like tolerance, solutions and the like benefits for personal beliefs and mysteries. In such an objectivity of the search for truth one tends to believe a person or even a society, may find that God is loving, invites mankind to life, covers his hope for the undying human soul, and is involved in the world context for the good of all persons. The heavenly provision addresses both the matters of human life and habitat in the world for all, and also the issues related to personal life and death. The first could well be documented for nations adopting the pattern of the good society. The second is related to faith beginning with the individual person. Faith scholarship must follow a different rule, a different interpretation of evidence, and conclusions found in experience. Devotion to search for truth, any truth, belongs to all cultures – physical or spiritual. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020