In this chapter, we will discuss the “big four” approaches to qualitative analysis – qualitative content analysis, thematic analysis, grounded theory, and discourse analysis – before briefly describing four additional commonly used approaches. Some of these approaches are empirical, either theory-driven or inductive, identifying observable concepts in the data. In others, research is from a social constructionist perspective, incorporating the researcher’s interpretation as an essential part of the analysis. Some methods, such as thematic analysis, can be used for either approach. This epistemological range means that, as with quantitative analyses, it is essential to select the appropriate method for analyzing the data, and the rigorous procedures involved in qualitative methodology must be followed meticulously.

In decision-making, facts should be distinguished from values. Values influence the decisions by scientists about what kinds of research to do and how to do it. But the norms of science, over time, promote the evolution of increasingly accurate understanding of facts. It is easier to establish facts when observations are repeatable and ostensible. Sustainability decisions usually require assessment of facts in very specific contexts, and that can increase uncertainty. In such cases, deliberation with interested and affected parties can help get the science right and get the right science. When the powerful see their interests threatened by increasing awareness of risks, they often try to slow the emergence of scientific consensus, especially by emphasizing uncertainty.

A research design is the sequence of things done in order to collect the information needed to answer a research question. The design states which data will be sought, from which sources, at which times, and in which ways. This chapter describes the influences that shape the decisions researchers must make when constructing a research design. Research designs differ in the source of information used, whether data used are naturally occurring or a result of intervention, and the way data are elicited, recorded, and analyzed. Typically, the nature of the research question, assumptions on which it is based, and ethical considerations drive the design construction. I describe seven major influences on design choice in this chapter: research question novelty; levels of analysis and explanation used; epistemological and ontological assumptions; characteristics of data sources; data analyzability; piloting results; and various practicalities. Understanding these influences will improve research design decisions.

Ethical self-formation and epistemic virtues have been a focus of attention in the history of science for over three decades, and yet, despite some important early contributions, anthropologists of science have only recently started to pay more sustained and explicit attention to the ethical. This chapter argues that anthropologists of science could benefit from taking a closer and more systematic look at recent developments in the anthropology of ethics. Conversely it suggests that anthropologists of ethics might gain from a closer consideration of some of the specificities of Euro-American science as an (internally and externally contested, multiple, and perhaps in part fictitious) ethical tradition. The first half of the chapter explores the rather fitful genealogy of an interest in the ethical in the history, sociology, and anthropology of science, and points to some of the elements from which the anthropology of science as an anthropology of ethics might be (re)built. The second half of the chapter gives one extended, ethnographically grounded example of what such a (re)building might produce, and suggests some of the ways in which anthropology’s exploration of both science and ethics might benefit.

This chapter, stimulated by Professor Bell’s contribution to legal education (as well as to comparative law and legal reasoning), tackles the question of whether traditional doctrinal law has anything to offer, intellectually, to disciplines outside law. That is to say, does law export knowledge to other disciplines or does it just import knowledge? Despite John Bell’s positive agenda asserted some eighteen or so years ago, this examination presents a gloomy picture. This is not to argue that law faculties are making no contributions to the Academy in general – indeed, the opposite is true. But such contributions are largely founded on knowledge imported into law faculties. Comparative lawyers, or some of them such as Professor Bell, offer some hope.

Beginning with the mysterious problem of the so-called “caste system,” this introduction questions the ubiquitous scholarly understanding of the monarchy as a cabal of lawmakers determined to legislate every detail of vassals’ lives. It introduces a very different perspective – namely, that subjects submitting gobierno or administrative-legislative petitions not only prompted the vast majority of the empire’s dizzying thousands of royal decrees – including those concerning novel categories of human difference. It explains how both liberal-era and Habsburg mythologies of Spanish imperial rule envisioned the king as the primary author of these texts, and proposes a labor-oriented, Actor-Network Theory-inspired alternative explanation. It introduces the petition-and-response system, explaining that early modern participants sought intimate lord–ruler dialogue, in which vassals and lords endowed their writings with voluntad or volition, in order to save the consciences of all involved. It also argues that in order for this communication to thrive, a number of legal fictions – including the transfer of voluntad across the globe – was necessary. Also lurking in the distance was violence against the saboteurs of this ruler–ruled dialogue. Lastly, this segment introduces the source material and book structure.

The goal of the final chapter is to examine the central role of necessities in the epistemological, moral and political theory of An Essay of Human Understanding and of the Two Treatises of Government. A study of the former shows Locke’s preoccupation with classical moral questions such as happiness and the ‘good objects of desires’ and how necessities helped him to strike a balance between tradition and the new science. As a rule of thumb of proper conduct, knowledge of necessities leads to the preservation of life, a human being’s most important duty to God. His doctrine of necessities is what made it possible for Locke to develop the theory of the public good with which, it is argued, he attempted to defeat the egoist theory of self-interest. Examination of his conception of property and money through the lens of human necessities shows a certain ambiguity in Locke’s normative ideals. Nevertheless, my conclusion is that above other considerations underlying the capital-oriented ideals of the period, the last word of Locke’s political theory is the public good represented by preservation and convenience for the commonwealth and, when possible, for the whole of humanity.

Jacobi argues that although Spinoza produced the most consistent rational system, its complete rational explanation leads to fatalism, mechanism, and atheism. The concern in this chapter is with how Jacobi stimulates Kant on issues of faith in relation to autonomy and practical reason (ethics), and how Kant’s “moral faith” seeks to avoid the pitfalls of mechanism while integrally linking faith with reason.

This chapter focuses on the ways in which Cicero’s choice of dialogue form serves to support his preferred position of Academic Scepticism in the Academica. From the letters Cicero wrote to Atticus while composing this work, we know that he was particularly interested in the verisimilitude of the conversation presented in his text. Yet, in the dedicatory letter that accompanied this text, Cicero is at pains to point out that this conversation is, in fact, fictitious, presenting to the reader speeches that never took place. The contention of this chapter is that Cicero’s apparently paradoxical focus on both the credibility and the fictitious nature of his dialogue can be explained by the epistemological stance advocated in this text. By creating a dramatically convincing (in rhetorical terms, enargēs, or ‘evident’) account of a conversation that never took place, Cicero is providing his reader with a further counter example to the Stoic theory of the kataleptic impression, which holds that true impressions can be distinguished from false impressions by virtue of their unique enargeia (or ‘evidentness’). Consequently, then, the form of the dialogue itself serves to reinforce the Academic claim that we have access to no clear criterion of truth.

Alistair Welchman argues that Schopenhauer was a direct perceptual realist. This interpretation of Schopenhauer’s epistemology sheds light on two difficulties elsewhere in his thought. The first is in his theory of compassion. Schopenhauer’s official view is that in compassion we see through the veil of maya into our essential identity with all other beings as will. Many commentators find this extravagant and suggest a psychological account instead, in which we imagine ourselves into the situation of the other. However this is contradicted by Schopenhauer’s own account of a similar contemporary theory, in which he appears to suggest that we directly perceive the Other’s emotions. But there is another advantage to this view: Schopenhauer is also a direct realist about perception of meaning, and this has repercussions for his (late) view that his metaphysics is hermeneutic in nature.

Each mining operation has its due date. Each new prospect of Arctic extractivism marks the beginning of another repetitive cycle of boom and bust, while monuments of short-lived prosperity and wounds of environmental destruction mark landscapes long after the machinery goes quiet. What can we learn from the dispossession associated with resource extractivism in the Arctic? What persistent issues remain in the wake of bulldozers, rock deposits, and obsolete construction roads leading nowhere? Resource extraction is not only a driving-force in the Anthropocene, it is also promoted as one of its solutions, through expansion of wind power or mining for rare minerals. The shift away from fossil fuels may perpetuate a pattern of colonial dispossession that has historically been justified in relation to the welfare state and in the name of economic progress, and is now justified as climate change mitigation. This chapter draws the attention to consistent tensions of Arctic extractivism and in Arctic scholarship. It proposes a greater curiosity towards subtle traces in the landscape, to silences, fragments, and gaps as a necessary step toward decolonization or reconciliation.

A link is made between epistemology – that is to say, the philosophy of knowledge – and statistics. Hume's criticism of induction is covered, as is Popper's. Various philosophies of statistics are described.

After Wittgenstein, the most immediately visible – though by no means the only – philosopher addressed in Wallace’s work is the neopragmatist Richard Rorty, whose book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature provided the title for one of Wallace’s later stories, a narrative concerned with the nature and revelation of truth. Indeed, the pragmatic concept that truth is a matter of vocabulary became one of the central pillars of Wallace’s own philosophy, as critics, including Hayes-Brady and Tracey, have shown. This chapter offers some context for reading the pragmatic strain that animates especially Wallace’s later works, including treatment of the liberal ironist and the question of the constituted other. Opening with an introduction to the history of the American pragmatic tradition, we move on to consider its direct and implicit presences in Wallace’s work, concluding with the proposal of a pragmatic model for reading Wallace’s writing in both thematic and structural frames.