Framework For Intention Research Articles

Science evolves through innumerable particular decisions of individual scientists to undertake specific investigations. Since the outcome of a completed investigation is an historical fact which cannot be changed, and the outcome of a proposed investigation cannot, from the very definition of research, be foreseen, conscious intention can be related only to a question to be answered or a problem to be solved. The rationality of the process of research, i.e., the extent to which it is an activity capable of well-ordered public or introspective explication, evinces itself primarily at the point where the scientist has to decide the question: "What research shall I do now?"1 This question arises in implicit form hourly, daily, weekly, yearly, or even from decade to decade in the life of every scientist. But mostly it is decided in relation to some larger plan of which the investigation under consideration is merely a contributory part. The scientific life is like "everyday" life in that its actions are normally governed by a hierarchy of plans the interconnected consequences and goals of which extend to ever-widening horizons.2 Thus, today I decide to discover why the electron microscope is not giving a steady image. I do this in order to continue observations of the dislocation structure in an alloy specimen, which is one of a batch of 20 that are being deliberately subjected to various mechanical stresses, so that I may test a conjecture concerning creep in turbine blades and thus contribute to the design of a new jet engine being undertaken for the air force by my company. Although I have not worked out a detailed programme of action in advance, the words I use show that I shall be able to decide the direction of each successive step by the logic of the current situation, within this larger framework of intentions. Unlike the lecturer who plans to explain the indeterminacy principle to the Stage I students in room G.42 between 12.00 p.m. and 12.50 p.m. on Thursday

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