What is an analysis?

What is an analysis? An analysis is an explanation of a pattern. It highlights certain trends in empirical data and asserts a causational force behind them; it posits the existence of invisible laws guiding visible phenomena. Motive can never be known for certain: if knowledge is seen as dichotomously divided into facts and opinions, into that which can proven and that which cannot, an analysis will always be an opinion. This categorical view of knowledge does not necessarily imply that all opinions are equal, because opinion may be subdivided into further categories, but it does eventually imply finite classes or levels of objectivity. Professor Jackson’s question is difficult because it assumes this view of knowledge while suggesting knowledge with which it is incompatible. In effect, he asks us whether a hexagon is a circle or a triangle. It is neither: circles and triangles are not absolutes but ends on a continuum of polygons, just like opinion and fact are ends on a continuum of objectivity.

 

Whereas circles and triangles are concrete points, fact and opinion constitute merely abstract directions. Knowledge stems from human experience in a single physical universal: shared physical laws preclude experience and knowledge that are entirely individual, while shared physical contexts preclude experience and knowledge that are entirely collective. In other words, people can never experience life from the same perspective in time and space, but must always experience life under the same laws of physics and chemistry.  The degree to which each of these two factors inform the formation of knowledge determines the relative objectivity of knowledge: knowledge based primarily on law is more objective, while knowledge based primarily on context is more subjective. In this regard, while an analysis cannot be true, one can be superior to another – “truer,” perhaps – in that it asserts a causational force based not just on circumstantial or anecdotal evidence. An analysis, like any knowledge, can approach fact as it draws on broadly observable laws.