Qualitative_data_analysis

Figure 12.1 The difference between associating and linking events
MAKING CONNECTIONS 179
know what jumping is because we have had experience of it. We have also
experienced and observed the effects of gravity. At a more abstract level, we know that
energy is needed to counter gravity—energy provided through the act of jumping.
We know that once that energy is exhausted, gravity will reassert itself—and the
athlete will return to the ground. On conceptual grounds, therefore, we can make a
connection between the different actions. We can show that David Hume jumped
the hurdle, without relying on an inference connecting two previously unconnected
events. Our explanation is couched rather in terms of what jumping involves: it is
through understanding the link between energy and gravity that we can connect
these events with confidence.
On the other hand, our identification of links is itself influenced by the regularity
with which events are associated. If things (on earth) fell any which way, rather than
in one direction, would we have discovered gravity? If people didn’t laugh at jokes,
would we know they were funny? Moreover, our interest in understanding links is
rarely to enjoy a moment of pure intellectual satisfaction; it is related to practical
tasks. We usually want to avoid mistakes and exploit opportunities, to better
influence or control future events. For example, comics who fail to make their
audience laugh may want to learn why their jokes fell flat. Here again, our concern
is with the regular association of one thing with another, even if only to break that
association and change future events.
We can contrast these different approaches pictorially as in Figure 12.1.
Associating events involves identifying the events as occurring together. Linking
events implies an interaction between them.
Despite the sometimes rather acrimonious debates which take place between rival
epistemologists, from a pragmatic point of view neither of these approaches has a
monopoly of wisdom. Just as meaning and number are different but mutually
dependent, so too are association and linking as a basis for establishing connections
between things. We can draw another T’ai-chi T’u diagram to symbolize this
relationship (Figure 12.2).
The regular association of events provides a basis for inferring possible
connections between them, but subject to conceptual confirmation
through establishing some links or connecting mechanisms which operate between