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The 6 Levels of Questioning in the Classroom (+ Examples)

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The 6 levels of questioning in the classroom.

The goal of questioning in the classroom is not simply to determine whether students have learned something, but rather to guide them in their learning process. Unlike  tests, quizzes, and exams , questioning in the classroom should be used to teach students, not test them! 

Questions as tests

Teachers spend a great deal of classroom time testing students through questions. Observations of teachers at all levels of education reveal that most spend more than 90 percent of their instructional time testing students (through questioning). And most of the questions teachers ask are typically factual questions that rely on short-term memory.

Although questions are widely used and serve many functions, teachers tend to overuse factual questions such as “What is the capital of California?” Not surprising, as many teachers ask upward of 400 questions every school day! And approximately 80 percent of all the questions teachers ask are factual, literal, or knowledge-based questions.

The result is a classroom in which there is little creative thinking taking place.

What is Bloom's Taxonomy? 

Bloom's Taxonomy  is a hierarchical model used in education to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. It's named after Benjamin Bloom, who chaired the committee of educators that devised it in the 1950s.

The taxonomy has six levels, designed to help educators create more effective learning objectives and engage students in higher levels of thinking. These levels are arranged in hierarchical form, moving from the lowest level of cognition to the highest level of cognition.

Bloom's Taxonomy was revised in 2001 to better reflect the different types of cognitive processes used in learning and understanding.

Why use Bloom's Taxonomy? 

Bloom's Taxonomy is a powerful tool in the K-12 classroom because it provides a structured approach to questioning that promotes higher levels of thinking. Instead of focusing on rote memorization, Bloom's Taxonomy encourages students to analyze, evaluate, and create. This level of questioning not only enhances students’ understanding of the material, but it also fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Moreover, this level of questioning in the classroom provides teachers with a clear framework to design their lessons and assess student learning effectively. This approach shifts the focus from merely testing students to facilitating meaningful learning experiences.

Levels of questioning in the classroom (+ examples)

Graphic used with permission by Vanderbilt University

Level 1: Remember

The first level of questioning in the classroom according to Bloom’s Taxonomy is "Remember" (previously: “Knowledge”). This base level involves recalling or recognizing information from memory. It's the most basic level of cognition, where students are asked to remember facts, terms, basic concepts, or answers without necessarily understanding what they mean.

Examples of this level of questioning in the classroom might include "What is the capital of France?" or "Who wrote 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?" Although this level is necessary, it's important to progress beyond it to promote higher levels of thinking.

Words often used in “Remember” questions often include  know ,  who ,  define ,  what ,  name ,  where ,  list , and  when .

Remembering question examples:

• "What is the date of the Declaration of Independence?"
• "Who is the author of 'Pride and Prejudice'?"
• "Can you list the planets in our solar system?"
• "What is the formula for the area of a rectangle?"
• "Who was the first president of the United States?"

Level 2: Understand 

The second level of questioning in the classroom is "Understand" (previously: “Comprehension”). At this stage, students are expected to comprehend the material, which means they can interpret, translate, and summarize the information.

This level goes beyond simple recall of facts and asks students to explain ideas or concepts in their own words.

Keywords often used in "Understand" questions include  explain ,  describe ,  identify ,  discuss , and  interpret .

Understanding questions examples:

• "Can you summarize the main events in the book in your own words?"
• "How would you interpret the author's intentions in this scene?"
• "Can you explain the concept of photosynthesis to a 5-year-old?"
• "What do you think the significance of this event in history is?"
• "How would you translate this sentence into your own words?"

Level 3: Apply

The third level of questioning in the classroom, according to Bloom’s Taxonomy, is "Apply" (previously: “Application”). At this stage, students are expected to use the information they have learned in new situations.

This stage involves problem-solving, implementing methods, and demonstrating how concepts can be used in real-world scenarios.

This level of questioning is important because it encourages students to go beyond simply recalling information and understanding concepts and to start applying this knowledge in practical ways. It promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills and helps students see the relevance and applicability of what they are learning.

Keywords often used in "Apply" questions include  demonstrate ,  apply ,  solve ,  use , and  illustrate .

Applying question examples:

• "How would you use the Pythagorean theorem to determine the length of the hypotenuse in a right-angled triangle?"
• "Can you construct a model to demonstrate how the solar system works?"
• "Using what you've learned about the water cycle, can you explain why it rains?"
• "How can you apply the principles of democracy to set up a student council in your school?"
• "Can you create an experiment to test the law of conservation of energy?"

Level 4: Analyze 

The fourth level of questioning in the classroom is "Analyze" (previously: “Analysis”). This level involves breaking down information into its component parts for better understanding. Students are expected to differentiate, organize, and relate the parts to the whole.

This stage is crucial as it encourages students to examine information in a detailed way and to understand how different parts relate to one another. This level of questioning promotes critical thinking and a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Keywords often used in "Analyze" questions include  compare ,  contrast ,  examine ,  classify , and  break down .

Analyzing questions examples

• "How does the protagonist's journey in the novel reflect societal issues?"
• "What are the similarities and differences between two political systems?"
• "How do the different elements of this artwork contribute to its overall impact?"
• "Explain the cause and effect relationship between events in a historical period."
• "How do the different theories of economics apply to this case study?"

Level 5: Evaluate 

The fifth level of questioning in the classroom is "Evaluate" (previously: “Evaluation”). At this stage, students are expected to form judgments about the value and worth of information based on criteria and standards. This involves appraising, judging, critiquing, and defending positions. This level encourages students to formulate their own opinions and make judgments based on their understanding and analysis of the information.

Keywords often used in "Evaluate" questions include  judge ,  rate ,  evaluate ,  defend , and  justify .

Evaluating question examples:

• "Was the ending of the novel satisfactory? Defend your position."
• "What do you think about the author's point of view?"
• "How would you rate this character's decisions throughout the story?"
• "Evaluate the effectiveness of the government's response in a historical event."
• "Can you justify your solution to this problem?"

Level 6: Create 

The final level of questioning in the classroom according to Bloom’s Taxonomy is "Create" (previously: “Synthesis”). At this stage, students are expected to use what they've learned to create something new or original. This could involve developing a plan or proposal, deriving a set of abstract relations, or presenting an original idea. This level of questioning encourages creativity and innovation, as students are asked to generate new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things. Keywords often used in "Create" questions include  design ,  construct ,  create ,  invent , and  compose .

Creating question examples:

• "Can you devise a way to ensure clean water access in developing countries?"
• "How would you design a fair and effective classroom behavior policy?"
• "Can you create a short story based on the themes we've discussed?"
• "Compose a poem that expresses your feelings about a current event."
• "Invent a new product that solves a problem you've identified."

It's elementary! 

Many teachers think primary-level students (Kindergarten through 2nd Grade) cannot handle higher-level questions. But nothing could be further from the truth! Challenging all students through higher-order questioning is one of the best ways to stimulate learning and enhance brain development, regardless of age.

If you only ask your students one level of questioning, your students might not be exposed to higher levels of thinking. If, for example, you only ask your students knowledge-based questions, they might think that learning a specific subject is nothing more than the ability to memorize a select number of facts.

The 6 levels of questioning in the classroom according to Bloom’s Taxonomy provide a structured shift from simple factual recall to more complex cognitive processes. This approach not only deepens students' understanding of the subject matter, but also fosters critical thinking, problem-solving skills, creativity, and innovation.

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The pursuit of performance excellence, critical thinking.

Critical thinking refers to the process of actively analyzing, assessing, synthesizing, evaluating and reflecting on information gathered from observation, experience, or communication. It is thinking in a clear, logical, reasoned, and reflective manner to solve problems or make decisions. Basically, critical thinking is taking a hard look at something to understand what it really means.

Critical Thinkers

Critical thinkers do not simply accept all ideas, theories, and conclusions as facts. They have a mindset of questioning ideas and conclusions. They make reasoned judgments that are logical and well thought out by assessing the evidence that supports a specific theory or conclusion.

When presented with a new piece of new information, critical thinkers may ask questions such as;

“What information supports that?”

“How was this information obtained?”

“Who obtained the information?”

“How do we know the information is valid?”

“Why is it that way?”

“What makes it do that?”

“How do we know that?”

“Are there other possibilities?”

Combination of Analytical and Creative Thinking

Many people perceive critical thinking just as analytical thinking. However, critical thinking incorporates both analytical thinking and creative thinking. Critical thinking does involve breaking down information into parts and analyzing the parts in a logical, step-by-step manner. However, it also involves challenging consensus to formulate new creative ideas and generate innovative solutions. It is critical thinking that helps to evaluate and improve your creative ideas.

Elements of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves:

• Gathering relevant information
• Evaluating information
• Asking questions
• Assessing bias or unsubstantiated assumptions
• Making inferences from the information and filling in gaps
• Using abstract ideas to interpret information
• Formulating ideas
• Weighing opinions
• Reaching well-reasoned conclusions
• Considering alternative possibilities
• Testing conclusions
• Verifying if evidence/argument support the conclusions

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is considered a higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, deduction, inference, reason, and evaluation. In order to demonstrate critical thinking, you would need to develop skills in;

Interpreting : understanding the significance or meaning of information

Analyzing : breaking information down into its parts

Connecting : making connections between related items or pieces of information.

Integrating : connecting and combining information to better understand the relationship between the information.

Evaluating : judging the value, credibility, or strength of something

Reasoning : creating an argument through logical steps

Deducing : forming a logical opinion about something based on the information or evidence that is available

Inferring : figuring something out through reasoning based on assumptions and ideas

Generating : producing new information, ideas, products, or ways of viewing things.

Blooms Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy Revised

Mind Mapping

Chunking Information

Brainstorming

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Learning about Synthesis Analysis

What D oes Synthesis and Analysis Mean?

Synthesis: the combination of ideas to

• show commonalities or patterns

Analysis: a detailed examination

• of elements, ideas, or the structure of something
• can be a basis for discussion or interpretation

Synthesis and Analysis: combine and examine ideas to

• show how commonalities, patterns, and elements fit together
• form a unified point for a theory, discussion, or interpretation
• develop an informed evaluation of the idea by presenting several different viewpoints and/or ideas

Key Resource: Synthesis Matrix

Synthesis Matrix

A synthesis matrix is an excellent tool to use to organize sources by theme and to be able to see the similarities and differences as well as any important patterns in the methodology and recommendations for future research. Using a synthesis matrix can assist you not only in synthesizing and analyzing,  but it can also aid you in finding a researchable problem and gaps in methodology and/or research.

Use the Synthesis Matrix Template attached below to organize your research by theme and look for patterns in your sources .Use the companion handout, "Types of Articles" to aid you in identifying the different article types for the sources you are using in your matrix. If you have any questions about how to use the synthesis matrix, sign up for the synthesis analysis group session to practice using them with Dr. Sara Northern!

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Critical thinking: analysis and synthesis.

• History and Mystery with Harriet Tubman

before you start How do you think learning more about context can help you better understand immigration issues?

1. Critical Thinking: Analysis and Synthesis

In the past two challenges, we’ve been working with a critical thinking process to investigate historical questions. In the Knowledge step, we break a research question down to help focus the investigation. In the Comprehension and Application steps, we examined sources and then put them into conversation with one another to identify connections and corroborate facts. In this challenge, we’re going to finish the critical thinking process by going through the Analysis and Synthesis steps.

• take a position that answers your research question,
• include evidence (from both primary and secondary sources) that backs up your answer, and
• tell your reader why or how your evidence supports your argument.

Argument A set of reasons that support or oppose an idea or action. 1a. Analysis In the Analysis step, you’re going to take a fresh look at the sources you’ve chosen. You probably have an idea by now about how you want to answer your research question. Think about which pieces of evidence will provide the strongest support for the position you’re taking. Consider how you might use details from your sources to illustrate your main points.

As you think about your sources one more time, you’re really planning out your argument. This is when you’ll want to figure out where you’re having difficulties connecting your evidence with your research question. If your analysis shows that you can’t support your argument with the sources you have, now is the time to either keep investigating or revise your answer to the research question.

1b. Synthesis The word synthesis means to form something new out of different parts. That’s what you’re doing in the last step of the critical thinking process: creating an argument out of evidence from your sources and your own analysis of what you’ve read. Remember, a historical argument needs not only a position that answers your research question, but also evidence from your sources and your own explanation of how that evidence supports your position.

hint It’s a great idea to draft your argument before a final project is due.

2. History and Mystery with Harriet Tubman

Have you ever been confronted with two versions of the same story? It can be hard to know which to believe, right? Historians and students of history often face the same challenge. In this Sophia Story , biographer and historian Kate Clifford Larson walks us through important moments in Harriet Tubman’s life and reveals the critical thinking steps she took to determine their historical accuracy.

Video Transcription

[MUSIC PLAYING] [VOCALIZATION]

Harriet Tubman is an American hero. She holds a unique place in the history of the Underground Railroad, and she is the first American woman to lead an armed raid during battle.

But until recently, her past was shrouded in mystery.

We didn't know much about what went into creating that human being that risked her life to fight for freedom.

This determined biographer use critical thinking steps to crack the case.

My name is Kate Clifford Larson, and I'm an historian, author, and consultant. I wrote a book called Bound for the Promised Land-- Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.

Kate also served as the historical consultant on the 2019 film, Harriet.

The story of Harriet Tubman first captured Kate's imagination years ago, when she was still a University student.

I wanted to know more about her. I decided to go to the library. And all I could find were two 19th century biographies, and then one written in 1943. I said, is this possible? She's so famous. Someone must have written about her since the 1940s. And in fact, no one had.

That's when Kate decided she would write a modern biography of Harriet Tubman.

The old biographies focused on Tubman's escape from slavery and work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Once she achieved her own freedom, Tubman returned south about 13 times and rescued 70 family and friends.

During the Civil War, Tubman led an armed raid up the Combahee River. They routed out rebel forces. They burned down plantations, and they liberated 750 people.

But not all of Tubman's story had been chronicled.

Most of her early life was missing from the historical record-- where she was raised, who raised her, who influenced her. Those are important questions.

So Kate set out to uncover Harriet's mysterious past. She would need to use key steps of critical thinking to do it. First, she had to gather knowledge. She started by forming a question.

The overarching main question is how Tubman became this extraordinary human being. I needed to know where she acquired the abilities that she had. They had to come from things that she had learned from her family and the community that she was raised in.

Kate's next step was to increase her comprehension. She began searching for information about Harriet's family.

I traveled to Maryland, where she was born and raised. And I found records in the courthouse. Enslaved people were passed down as property in wills, in probate records, estate records. So those records are part of courthouse documentation.

Kate's diligence paid off. She began uncovering details of Tubman's early life that had never been explored.

I discovered that Harriet Tubman's parents were enslaved by different masters. When Harriet was a small child, her enslaver took her mother and her siblings away from their father. So the family was separated.

When Harriet was a teenager, her enslaver hired her out to a family that lived in Madison, Maryland. But I had no idea who the family was, or where Madison was.

Again, Kate turned to the court records.

They lived in a maritime community, on the water, in a small bay. They had shipbuilding business. They had thousands of acres of forest that needed to be cut.

For her next step, Kate took to the land to analyze how Harriet's move and her relationship to her father might have impacted her.

Going to Madison was really important, so that I could walk that landscape and see where this family lived. It turned out that Tubman's enslavers lived not too far from where Harriet Tubman's father lived. He was a lumberjack, a timber foreman, a leader in the community. He had many, many survival abilities. And in Madison, Harriet and her father were able to spend time together. She worked on a timber gang with him.

Next, Kate began to synthesize what she'd learned.

Being near her father afforded her the opportunity to learn how to survive in the woods, how to read that landscape, how to travel through it and negotiate it, how to feed yourself and keep yourself warm or cool, protect yourself from predators and disease.

Kate now understood the role of Harriet's father. Continuing to synthesize, she realized something else. Right on the Madison waterways, where Harriet had moved, a well-known Underground Railroad network was known to have operated.

Black mariners that came in and out of the docks carried messages secretly back and forth from disparate African-American communities around the Atlantic seaboard, about freedom, what was going on, who was fighting for the end of slavery. And I realized the Black mariners, they could teach her how to read that night sky, and follow the North Star and many other constellations.

Kate's critical thinking steps had led to a breakthrough about the forces that shaped Harriet Tubman.

Moving to Madison that changed her life. In Madison, she learned the abilities that she used on the Underground Railroad and in the Civil War. Those abilities were crucial to her survival and her success. That's what she gained from living there and learning from her father and the black mariners.

With this new understanding of Harriet's origins, Kate was ready for her last step-- to take action and write her book.

The information that came out of court records, and then the history of the time period, the landscape of her life-- I put that all together to develop a narrative of her life.

Published in 2003, Kate's book is considered by many to be the definitive biography of Harriet Tubman.

When we look at historical figures, it's important to know where they came from. Discovering Harriet Tubman's family and community, I was able to understand her and how she became this extraordinary human being.

Gather knowledge, increase comprehension, analyze, synthesize, and take action. These critical thinking steps led to success. You, too, can use them in school, work, or even to solve one of history's mysteries.

think about it How will these same steps strengthen your problem solving skill and help you think critically in your own life?

Let’s start our examination of immigration in the present and throughout U.S. history to understand what lessons we can apply to the future.

summary In this lesson, you learned about the final steps of the critical thinking process: analysis and synthesis . In the analysis step, you will review your sources once again while thinking about how your evidence may or may not support the argument you’re beginning to formulate. In the synthesis step, you will put it all together and create an evidence-based argument. You also learned about the history and mystery with Harriet Tubman where Harriet Tubman’s biographer used the six steps of critical thinking to discover the real story of this fascinating American hero. Best of luck in your learning!

Source: Strategic Education, Inc. 2020. Learn from the Past, Prepare for the Future.

A set of reasons that support or oppose an idea or action.

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8.15: Synthesis in Practice

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Learning Objectives

• Demonstrate strategies for synthesis

Professors frequently expect you to interpret, make inferences, and otherwise synthesize—bring ideas together to make something new or find a new way of looking at something old. (It might help to think of synthesis as the opposite of analysis. To synthesize is to combine; to analyze is to break down.)

Getting Better at Synthesis

To get an A on essays and papers in many courses, such as literature and history, what you write in reaction to the work of others should use synthesis to create new meaning or to show a deeper understanding of what you learned.

To do so, it helps to look for connections and patterns. One way to synthesize when writing an argument essay, paper, or other project is to look for themes among your sources. So try categorizing ideas by topic rather than by source—making associations across and between sources.

Synthesis can seem difficult, particularly if you are used to analyzing others’ points but not used to making your own. Like most things, however, it gets easier with practice. So don’t be hard on yourself if it seems difficult at first.

EXAMPLE: Synthesis in an Argument

In the movie, a successful young screenwriter named Gil is visiting Paris with his girlfriend and her parents, who are more politically conservative than he is. Inexplicably, every midnight he time-travels back to the 1920’s Paris, a time period he’s always found fascinating, especially because of the writers and painters—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso—with whom he’s now on a first-name basis. Gil is enchanted and always wants to stay in this fantastical past. But every morning, he’s back in the real present—feeling out of sync with his girlfriend and her parents.

For your essay, you’ve tried to come up with a narrower topic, but so far nothing seems right. Suddenly, you start paying more attention to the girlfriend’s parents’ dialogue about politics, which amount to such phrases as “we have to go back to…,” “it was a better time,” “Americans used to be able to…” and “the way it used to be.”

And then it clicks with you that the girlfriend’s parents are like Gil—longing for a different time, whether real or imagined. That kind of idea generation, where you find the connection and theme across related elements of the movie, is synthesis.

You decide to write your essay to answer the research question: How is the motivation of Gil’s girlfriend’s parents similar to Gil’s? Your thesis becomes “Despite seeming to be very different, Gil and his girlfriend’s parents are similarly motivated, and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris’s message about nostalgia can be applied to all of them.”

Of course, you’ll have to try to convince your readers that your thesis is valid, and you may or not be successful,—but that’s true with all theses. And your professor will be glad to see the synthesis.

Synthesizing From Multiple Sources

Below are some questions that highlight ways in which the act of synthesizing brings together ideas and generates new knowledge.

How do the sources speak to your specific argument or research question?

Your argument or research question is the main unifying element in your project. Keep this in the forefront of your mind when you write about your sources. Explain how, specifically, each source supports your central claim/s or suggests possible answers to your question. For example: Does the source provide essential background information or a definitional foundation for your argument or inquiry? Does it present numerical data that supports one of your points or helps you answer a question you have posed? Does it present a theory that might be applied to some aspect of your project? Does it present a recognized expert’s insights on your topic?

How do the sources speak to each other?

Sometimes you will find explicit dialogue between sources (for example, Source A refutes Source B by name), and sometimes you will need to bring your sources into dialogue (for example, Source A does not mention Source B, but you observe that the two are advancing similar or dissimilar arguments). Attending to interrelationships among sources is at the heart of the task of synthesis.

Begin by asking: What are the points of agreement? Where are there disagreements?

But be aware that you are unlikely to find your sources in pure positions of “for” vs. “against.” You are more likely to find agreement in some areas and disagreement in other areas. You may also find agreement but for different reasons—such as different underlying values and priorities, or different methods of inquiry.

Where are there, or aren’t there, information gaps?

Where is the available information unreliable (for example, it might be difficult to trace back to primary sources), or limited, (for example, based on just a few case studies, or on just one geographical area), or difficult for non-specialists to access (for example, written in specialist language, or tucked away in a physical archive)?

Does your inquiry contain sub-questions that may not at present be answerable, or that may not be answerable without additional primary research—for example, laboratory studies, direct observation, interviews with witnesses or participants, etc.?

Or, alternatively, is there a great deal of reliable, accessible information that addresses your question or speaks to your argument or inquiry?

In considering these questions, you are engaged in synthesis: you are conducting an overview assessment of the field of available information and in this way generating composite knowledge.

Remember, synthesis is about pulling together information from a range of sources in order to answer a question or construct an argument. It is something you will be called upon to do in a wide variety of academic, professional, and personal contexts. Being able to dive into an ocean of information and surface with meaningful conclusions is an essential skill.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/20276

Synthesis in Literature Reviews

One place synthesis is usually required is in literature reviews for honors’ theses, master’s theses, and Ph.D. dissertations. In all those cases, literature reviews are intended to contribute more than annotated bibliographies do and to be arguments for the research conducted for the theses or dissertations. If you are writing an honors thesis, master’s thesis, or Ph.D. dissertation, you will find more help with Susan Imel’s Writing a Literature Review .

Showing Synthesis

Some ways to demonstrate synthesis in your writing is to compare and contrast multiple sources. Below are some examples of sentence structures that demonstrate synthesis:

Synthesis that indicates agreement/support:

• Source A asserts that… Source B agrees when he or she states…
• According to both A & B…
• The combined conclusions of sources B & C seem to indicate that…
• The evidence shows that…
• Source B is correct that…
• Source C makes a convincing case when she argues…
• I agree with Source A’s conclusion that…

Synthesis that indicates disagreement/conflict:

• Source A asserts that…Yet Source B offers a different perspective by…
• Source C & B would likely disagree regarding…
• My view, however, contrary to what Source A has argued, is…
• I argue that X & Y are the best solution, though Source B offers a different option.
• In contrast, I would like to offer some objections to the opinions expressed by source C…
• While source A makes an intriguing argument, I would disagree…

What the above examples indicate is that synthesis is the careful weaving in of outside opinions in order to show your reader the many ideas and arguments on your topic and further assert your own. Notice, too, that the above examples are also signal phrases : language that introduces outside source material to be either quoted or paraphrased, i.e., “contrary to what Source A has argued, source B maintains ___________ .”

Try It: Balancing Sources and Synthesis

Here’s a technique to quickly assess whether there is enough of your original thought in your essay or paper, as opposed to information from your sources: Highlight what you have included as quotes, paraphrases, and summaries from your sources. Next, highlight in another color what you have written yourself. Then take a look at the pages and decide whether there is enough of your own thinking in them.

For the mocked-up pages below, assume that the yellow-highlighted lines were written by the writer and the pink-highlighted lines are quotes, paraphrases, and summaries she pulled from her sources.

Which page most demonstrates the writer’s own ideas?

Source: Joy McGregor. “A Visual Approach: Teaching Synthesis,” School Library Monthly, Volume XXVII, Number 8/May-June 2011.

[reveal-answer q=”149882″]Show Answer[/reveal-answer] [hidden-answer a=”149882″]

Answer: The Middle Sample.

The yellow-highlighted sections in the middle sample shows more contributions from the author than from quotes, paraphrases, and summaries of other sources.

[/hidden-answer]

signal phrase : a phrase that introduces outside sources material that will be quoted or paraphrased

Contributors and Attributions

• Synthesizing Your Research Findings. Authored by : Christine Photinos. Project : Composing Ourselves and Our World . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Synthesizing. Authored by : Melanie Gagich. Located at : https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/introduction-to-writing/chapter/8-1-synthesizing/ . Project : Introduction to Writing in College. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Synthesis of Your Own Ideas . Provided by : Ohio State University Libraries . Located at : https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/synthesis/ . Project : Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research by Teaching & Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
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• v.3(1); 2016

What Synthesis Methodology Should I Use? A Review and Analysis of Approaches to Research Synthesis

Kara schick-makaroff.

1 Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Marjorie MacDonald

2 School of Nursing, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

Marilyn Plummer

3 College of Nursing, Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada

Judy Burgess

4 Student Services, University Health Services, Victoria, BC, Canada

Wendy Neander

Associated data, additional file 1.

When we began this process, we were doctoral students and a faculty member in a research methods course. As students, we were facing a review of the literature for our dissertations. We encountered several different ways of conducting a review but were unable to locate any resources that synthesized all of the various synthesis methodologies. Our purpose is to present a comprehensive overview and assessment of the main approaches to research synthesis. We use ‘research synthesis’ as a broad overarching term to describe various approaches to combining, integrating, and synthesizing research findings.

We conducted an integrative review of the literature to explore the historical, contextual, and evolving nature of research synthesis. We searched five databases, reviewed websites of key organizations, hand-searched several journals, and examined relevant texts from the reference lists of the documents we had already obtained.

We identified four broad categories of research synthesis methodology including conventional, quantitative, qualitative, and emerging syntheses. Each of the broad categories was compared to the others on the following: key characteristics, purpose, method, product, context, underlying assumptions, unit of analysis, strengths and limitations, and when to use each approach.

Conclusions

The current state of research synthesis reflects significant advancements in emerging synthesis studies that integrate diverse data types and sources. New approaches to research synthesis provide a much broader range of review alternatives available to health and social science students and researchers.

1. Introduction

Since the turn of the century, public health emergencies have been identified worldwide, particularly related to infectious diseases. For example, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in Canada in 2002-2003, the recent Ebola epidemic in Africa, and the ongoing HIV/AIDs pandemic are global health concerns. There have also been dramatic increases in the prevalence of chronic diseases around the world [1] – [3] . These epidemiological challenges have raised concerns about the ability of health systems worldwide to address these crises. As a result, public health systems reform has been initiated in a number of countries. In Canada, as in other countries, the role of evidence to support public health reform and improve population health has been given high priority. Yet, there continues to be a significant gap between the production of evidence through research and its application in practice [4] – [5] . One strategy to address this gap has been the development of new research synthesis methodologies to deal with the time-sensitive and wide ranging evidence needs of policy makers and practitioners in all areas of health care, including public health.

As doctoral nursing students facing a review of the literature for our dissertations, and as a faculty member teaching a research methods course, we encountered several ways of conducting a research synthesis but found no comprehensive resources that discussed, compared, and contrasted various synthesis methodologies on their purposes, processes, strengths and limitations. To complicate matters, writers use terms interchangeably or use different terms to mean the same thing, and the literature is often contradictory about various approaches. Some texts [6] , [7] – [9] did provide a preliminary understanding about how research synthesis had been taken up in nursing, but these did not meet our requirements. Thus, in this article we address the need for a comprehensive overview of research synthesis methodologies to guide public health, health care, and social science researchers and practitioners.

Research synthesis is relatively new in public health but has a long history in other fields dating back to the late 1800s. Research synthesis, a research process in its own right [10] , has become more prominent in the wake of the evidence-based movement of the 1990s. Research syntheses have found their advocates and detractors in all disciplines, with challenges to the processes of systematic review and meta-analysis, in particular, being raised by critics of evidence-based healthcare [11] – [13] .

Our purpose was to conduct an integrative review of the literature to explore the historical, contextual, and evolving nature of research synthesis [14] – [15] . We synthesize and critique the main approaches to research synthesis that are relevant for public health, health care, and social scientists. Research synthesis is the overarching term we use to describe approaches to combining, aggregating, integrating, and synthesizing primary research findings. Each synthesis methodology draws on different types of findings depending on the purpose and product of the chosen synthesis (see Additional File 1 ).

3. Method of Review

Based on our current knowledge of the literature, we identified these approaches to include in our review: systematic review, meta-analysis, qualitative meta-synthesis, meta-narrative synthesis, scoping review, rapid review, realist synthesis, concept analysis, literature review, and integrative review. Our first step was to divide the synthesis types among the research team. Each member did a preliminary search to identify key texts. The team then met to develop search terms and a framework to guide the review.

Over the period of 2008 to 2012 we extensively searched the literature, updating our search at several time points, not restricting our search by date. The dates of texts reviewed range from 1967 to 2015. We used the terms above combined with the term “method* (e.g., “realist synthesis” and “method*) in the database Health Source: Academic Edition (includes Medline and CINAHL). This search yielded very few texts on some methodologies and many on others. We realized that many documents on research synthesis had not been picked up in the search. Therefore, we also searched Google Scholar, PubMed, ERIC, and Social Science Index, as well as the websites of key organizations such as the Joanna Briggs Institute, the University of York Centre for Evidence-Based Nursing, and the Cochrane Collaboration database. We hand searched several nursing, social science, public health and health policy journals. Finally, we traced relevant documents from the references in obtained texts.

We included works that met the following inclusion criteria: (1) published in English; (2) discussed the history of research synthesis; (3) explicitly described the approach and specific methods; or (4) identified issues, challenges, strengths and limitations of the particular methodology. We excluded research reports that resulted from the use of particular synthesis methodologies unless they also included criteria 2, 3, or 4 above.

Based on our search, we identified additional types of research synthesis (e.g., meta-interpretation, best evidence synthesis, critical interpretive synthesis, meta-summary, grounded formal theory). Still, we missed some important developments in meta-analysis, for example, identified by the journal's reviewers that have now been discussed briefly in the paper. The final set of 197 texts included in our review comprised theoretical, empirical, and conceptual papers, books, editorials and commentaries, and policy documents.

In our preliminary review of key texts, the team inductively developed a framework of the important elements of each method for comparison. In the next phase, each text was read carefully, and data for these elements were extracted into a table for comparison on the points of: key characteristics, purpose, methods, and product; see Additional File 1 ). Once the data were grouped and extracted, we synthesized across categories based on the following additional points of comparison: complexity of the process, degree of systematization, consideration of context, underlying assumptions, unit of analysis, and when to use each approach. In our results, we discuss our comparison of the various synthesis approaches on the elements above. Drawing only on documents for the review, ethics approval was not required.

We identified four broad categories of research synthesis methodology: Conventional, quantitative, qualitative, and emerging syntheses. From our dataset of 197 texts, we had 14 texts on conventional synthesis, 64 on quantitative synthesis, 78 on qualitative synthesis, and 41 on emerging syntheses. Table 1 provides an overview of the four types of research synthesis, definitions, types of data used, products, and examples of the methodology.

Although we group these types of synthesis into four broad categories on the basis of similarities, each type within a category has unique characteristics, which may differ from the overall group similarities. Each could be explored in greater depth to tease out their unique characteristics, but detailed comparison is beyond the scope of this article.

Additional File 1 presents one or more selected types of synthesis that represent the broad category but is not an exhaustive presentation of all types within each category. It provides more depth for specific examples from each category of synthesis on the characteristics, purpose, methods, and products than is found in Table 1 .

4.1. Key Characteristics

4.1.1. what is it.

Here we draw on two types of categorization. First, we utilize Dixon Woods et al.'s [49] classification of research syntheses as being either integrative or interpretive . (Please note that integrative syntheses are not the same as an integrative review as defined in Additional File 1 .) Second, we use Popay's [80] enhancement and epistemological models .

The defining characteristics of integrative syntheses are that they involve summarizing the data achieved by pooling data [49] . Integrative syntheses include systematic reviews, meta-analyses, as well as scoping and rapid reviews because each of these focus on summarizing data. They also define concepts from the outset (although this may not always be true in scoping or rapid reviews) and deal with a well-specified phenomenon of interest.

Interpretive syntheses are primarily concerned with the development of concepts and theories that integrate concepts [49] . The analysis in interpretive synthesis is conceptual both in process and outcome, and “the product is not aggregations of data, but theory” [49] , [p.12]. Interpretive syntheses involve induction and interpretation, and are primarily conceptual in process and outcome. Examples include integrative reviews, some systematic reviews, all of the qualitative syntheses, meta-narrative, realist and critical interpretive syntheses. Of note, both quantitative and qualitative studies can be either integrative or interpretive

The second categorization, enhancement versus epistemological , applies to those approaches that use multiple data types and sources [80] . Popay's [80] classification reflects the ways that qualitative data are valued in relation to quantitative data.

In the enhancement model , qualitative data adds something to quantitative analysis. The enhancement model is reflected in systematic reviews and meta-analyses that use some qualitative data to enhance interpretation and explanation. It may also be reflected in some rapid reviews that draw on quantitative data but use some qualitative data.

The epistemological model assumes that quantitative and qualitative data are equal and each has something unique to contribute. All of the other review approaches, except pure quantitative or qualitative syntheses, reflect the epistemological model because they value all data types equally but see them as contributing different understandings.

4.1.2. Data type

By and large, the quantitative approaches (quantitative systematic review and meta-analysis) have typically used purely quantitative data (i.e., expressed in numeric form). More recently, both Cochrane [81] and Campbell [82] collaborations are grappling with the need to, and the process of, integrating qualitative research into a systematic review. The qualitative approaches use qualitative data (i.e., expressed in words). All of the emerging synthesis types, as well as the conventional integrative review, incorporate qualitative and quantitative study designs and data.

4.1.3. Research question

Four types of research questions direct inquiry across the different types of syntheses. The first is a well-developed research question that gives direction to the synthesis (e.g., meta-analysis, systematic review, meta-study, concept analysis, rapid review, realist synthesis). The second begins as a broad general question that evolves and becomes more refined over the course of the synthesis (e.g., meta-ethnography, scoping review, meta-narrative, critical interpretive synthesis). In the third type, the synthesis begins with a phenomenon of interest and the question emerges in the analytic process (e.g., grounded formal theory). Lastly, there is no clear question, but rather a general review purpose (e.g., integrative review). Thus, the requirement for a well-defined question cuts across at least three of the synthesis types (e.g., quantitative, qualitative, and emerging).

4.1.4. Quality appraisal

This is a contested issue within and between the four synthesis categories. There are strong proponents of quality appraisal in the quantitative traditions of systematic review and meta-analysis based on the need for strong studies that will not jeopardize validity of the overall findings. Nonetheless, there is no consensus on pre-defined criteria; many scales exist that vary dramatically in composition. This has methodological implications for the credibility of findings [83] .

Specific methodologies from the conventional, qualitative, and emerging categories support quality appraisal but do so with caveats. In conventional integrative reviews appraisal is recommended, but depends on the sampling frame used in the study [18] . In meta-study, appraisal criteria are explicit but quality criteria are used in different ways depending on the specific requirements of the inquiry [54] . Among the emerging syntheses, meta-narrative review developers support appraisal of a study based on criteria from the research tradition of the primary study [67] , [84] – [85] . Realist synthesis similarly supports the use of high quality evidence, but appraisal checklists are viewed with scepticism and evidence is judged based on relevance to the research question and whether a credible inference may be drawn [69] . Like realist, critical interpretive syntheses do not judge quality using standardized appraisal instruments. They will exclude fatally flawed studies, but there is no consensus on what ‘fatally flawed’ means [49] , [71] . Appraisal is based on relevance to the inquiry, not rigor of the study.

There is no agreement on quality appraisal among qualitative meta-ethnographers with some supporting and others refuting the need for appraisal. [60] , [62] . Opponents of quality appraisal are found among authors of qualitative (grounded formal theory and concept analysis) and emerging syntheses (scoping and rapid reviews) because quality is not deemed relevant to the intention of the synthesis; the studies being reviewed are not effectiveness studies where quality is extremely important. These qualitative synthesis are often reviews of theoretical developments where the concept itself is what is important, or reviews that provide quotations from the raw data so readers can make their own judgements about the relevance and utility of the data. For example, in formal grounded theory, the purpose of theory generation and authenticity of data used to generate the theory is not as important as the conceptual category. Inaccuracies may be corrected in other ways, such as using the constant comparative method, which facilitates development of theoretical concepts that are repeatedly found in the data [86] – [87] . For pragmatic reasons, evidence is not assessed in rapid and scoping reviews, in part to produce a timely product. The issue of quality appraisal is unresolved across the terrain of research synthesis and we consider this further in our discussion.

4.2. Purpose

All research syntheses share a common purpose -- to summarize, synthesize, or integrate research findings from diverse studies. This helps readers stay abreast of the burgeoning literature in a field. Our discussion here is at the level of the four categories of synthesis. Beginning with conventional literature syntheses, the overall purpose is to attend to mature topics for the purpose of re-conceptualization or to new topics requiring preliminary conceptualization [14] . Such syntheses may be helpful to consider contradictory evidence, map shifting trends in the study of a phenomenon, and describe the emergence of research in diverse fields [14] . The purpose here is to set the stage for a study by identifying what has been done, gaps in the literature, important research questions, or to develop a conceptual framework to guide data collection and analysis.

The purpose of quantitative systematic reviews is to combine, aggregate, or integrate empirical research to be able to generalize from a group of studies and determine the limits of generalization [27] . The focus of quantitative systematic reviews has been primarily on aggregating the results of studies evaluating the effectiveness of interventions using experimental, quasi-experimental, and more recently, observational designs. Systematic reviews can be done with or without quantitative meta-analysis but a meta-analysis always takes place within the context of a systematic review. Researchers must consider the review's purpose and the nature of their data in undertaking a quantitative synthesis; this will assist in determining the approach.

The purpose of qualitative syntheses is broadly to synthesize complex health experiences, practices, or concepts arising in healthcare environments. There may be various purposes depending on the qualitative methodology. For example, in hermeneutic studies the aim may be holistic explanation or understanding of a phenomenon [42] , which is deepened by integrating the findings from multiple studies. In grounded formal theory, the aim is to produce a conceptual framework or theory expected to be applicable beyond the original study. Although not able to generalize from qualitative research in the statistical sense [88] , qualitative researchers usually do want to say something about the applicability of their synthesis to other settings or phenomena. This notion of ‘theoretical generalization’ has been referred to as ‘transferability’ [89] – [90] and is an important criterion of rigour in qualitative research. It applies equally to the products of a qualitative synthesis in which the synthesis of multiple studies on the same phenomenon strengthens the ability to draw transferable conclusions.

The overarching purpose of emerging syntheses is challenging the more traditional types of syntheses, in part by using data from both quantitative and qualitative studies with diverse designs for analysis. Beyond this, however, each emerging synthesis methodology has a unique purpose. In meta-narrative review, the purpose is to identify different research traditions in the area, synthesize a complex and diverse body of research. Critical interpretive synthesis shares this characteristic. Although a distinctive approach, critical interpretive synthesis utilizes a modification of the analytic strategies of meta-ethnography [61] (e.g., reciprocal translational analysis, refutational synthesis, and lines of argument synthesis) but goes beyond the use of these to bring a critical perspective to bear in challenging the normative or epistemological assumptions in the primary literature [72] – [73] . The unique purpose of a realist synthesis is to amalgamate complex empirical evidence and theoretical understandings within a diverse body of literature to uncover the operative mechanisms and contexts that affect the outcomes of social interventions. In a scoping review, the intention is to find key concepts, examine the range of research in an area, and identify gaps in the literature. The purpose of a rapid review is comparable to that of a scoping review, but done quickly to meet the time-sensitive information needs of policy makers.

4.3. Method

4.3.1. degree of systematization.

There are varying degrees of systematization across the categories of research synthesis. The most systematized are quantitative systematic reviews and meta-analyses. There are clear processes in each with judgments to be made at each step, although there are no agreed upon guidelines for this. The process is inherently subjective despite attempts to develop objective and systematic processes [91] – [92] . Mullen and Ramirez [27] suggest that there is often a false sense of rigour implied by the terms ‘systematic review’ and ‘meta-analysis’ because of their clearly defined procedures.

In comparison with some types of qualitative synthesis, concept analysis is quite procedural. Qualitative meta-synthesis also has defined procedures and is systematic, yet perhaps less so than concept analysis. Qualitative meta-synthesis starts in an unsystematic way but becomes more systematic as it unfolds. Procedures and frameworks exist for some of the emerging types of synthesis [e.g., [50] , [63] , [71] , [93] ] but are not linear, have considerable flexibility, and are often messy with emergent processes [85] . Conventional literature reviews tend not to be as systematic as the other three types. In fact, the lack of systematization in conventional literature synthesis was the reason for the development of more systematic quantitative [17] , [20] and qualitative [45] – [46] , [61] approaches. Some authors in the field [18] have clarified processes for integrative reviews making them more systematic and rigorous, but most conventional syntheses remain relatively unsystematic in comparison with other types.

4.3.2. Complexity of the process

Some synthesis processes are considerably more complex than others. Methodologies with clearly defined steps are arguably less complex than the more flexible and emergent ones. We know that any study encounters challenges and it is rare that a pre-determined research protocol can be followed exactly as intended. Not even the rigorous methods associated with Cochrane [81] systematic reviews and meta-analyses are always implemented exactly as intended. Even when dealing with numbers rather than words, interpretation is always part of the process. Our collective experience suggests that new methodologies (e.g., meta-narrative synthesis and realist synthesis) that integrate different data types and methods are more complex than conventional reviews or the rapid and scoping reviews.

4.4. Product

The products of research syntheses usually take three distinct formats (see Table 1 and Additional File 1 for further details). The first representation is in tables, charts, graphical displays, diagrams and maps as seen in integrative, scoping and rapid reviews, meta-analyses, and critical interpretive syntheses. The second type of synthesis product is the use of mathematical scores. Summary statements of effectiveness are mathematically displayed in meta-analyses (as an effect size), systematic reviews, and rapid reviews (statistical significance).

The third synthesis product may be a theory or theoretical framework. A mid-range theory can be produced from formal grounded theory, meta-study, meta-ethnography, and realist synthesis. Theoretical/conceptual frameworks or conceptual maps may be created in meta-narrative and critical interpretive syntheses, and integrative reviews. Concepts for use within theories are produced in concept analysis. While these three product types span the categories of research synthesis, narrative description and summary is used to present the products resulting from all methodologies.

4.5. Consideration of context

There are diverse ways that context is considered in the four broad categories of synthesis. Context may be considered to the extent that it features within primary studies for the purpose of the review. Context may also be understood as an integral aspect of both the phenomenon under study and the synthesis methodology (e.g., realist synthesis). Quantitative systematic reviews and meta-analyses have typically been conducted on studies using experimental and quasi-experimental designs and more recently observational studies, which control for contextual features to allow for understanding of the ‘true’ effect of the intervention [94] .

More recently, systematic reviews have included covariates or mediating variables (i.e., contextual factors) to help explain variability in the results across studies [27] . Context, however, is usually handled in the narrative discussion of findings rather than in the synthesis itself. This lack of attention to context has been one criticism leveled against systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which restrict the types of research designs that are considered [e.g., [95] ].

When conventional literature reviews incorporate studies that deal with context, there is a place for considering contextual influences on the intervention or phenomenon. Reviews of quantitative experimental studies tend to be devoid of contextual considerations since the original studies are similarly devoid, but context might figure prominently in a literature review that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative studies.

Qualitative syntheses have been conducted on the contextual features of a particular phenomenon [33] . Paterson et al. [54] advise researchers to attend to how context may have influenced the findings of particular primary studies. In qualitative analysis, contextual features may form categories by which the data can be compared and contrasted to facilitate interpretation. Because qualitative research is often conducted to understand a phenomenon as a whole, context may be a focus, although this varies with the qualitative methodology. At the same time, the findings in a qualitative synthesis are abstracted from the original reports and taken to a higher level of conceptualization, thus removing them from the original context.

Meta-narrative synthesis [67] , [84] , because it draws on diverse research traditions and methodologies, may incorporate context into the analysis and findings. There is not, however, an explicit step in the process that directs the analyst to consider context. Generally, the research question guiding the synthesis is an important factor in whether context will be a focus.

More recent iterations of concept analysis [47] , [96] – [97] explicitly consider context reflecting the assumption that a concept's meaning is determined by its context. Morse [47] points out, however, that Wilson's [98] approach to concept analysis, and those based on Wilson [e.g., [45] ], identify attributes that are devoid of context, while Rodgers' [96] , [99] evolutionary method considers context (e.g., antecedents, consequences, and relationships to other concepts) in concept development.

Realist synthesis [69] considers context as integral to the study. It draws on a critical realist logic of inquiry grounded in the work of Bhaskar [100] , who argues that empirical co-occurrence of events is insufficient for inferring causation. One must identify generative mechanisms whose properties are causal and, depending on the situation, may nor may not be activated [94] . Context interacts with program/intervention elements and thus cannot be differentiated from the phenomenon [69] . This approach synthesizes evidence on generative mechanisms and analyzes contextual features that activate them; the result feeds back into the context. The focus is on what works, for whom, under what conditions, why and how [68] .

4.6. Underlying Philosophical and Theoretical Assumptions

When we began our review, we ‘assumed’ that the assumptions underlying synthesis methodologies would be a distinguishing characteristic of synthesis types, and that we could compare the various types on their assumptions, explicit or implicit. We found, however, that many authors did not explicate the underlying assumptions of their methodologies, and it was difficult to infer them. Kirkevold [101] has argued that integrative reviews need to be carried out from an explicit philosophical or theoretical perspective. We argue this should be true for all types of synthesis.

Authors of some emerging synthesis approaches have been very explicit about their assumptions and philosophical underpinnings. An implicit assumption of most emerging synthesis methodologies is that quantitative systematic reviews and meta-analyses have limited utility in some fields [e.g., in public health – [13] , [102] ] and for some kinds of review questions like those about feasibility and appropriateness versus effectiveness [103] – [104] . They also assume that ontologically and epistemologically, both kinds of data can be combined. This is a significant debate in the literature because it is about the commensurability of overarching paradigms [105] but this is beyond the scope of this review.

Realist synthesis is philosophically grounded in critical realism or, as noted above, a realist logic of inquiry [93] , [99] , [106] – [107] . Key assumptions regarding the nature of interventions that inform critical realism have been described above in the section on context. See Pawson et al. [106] for more information on critical realism, the philosophical basis of realist synthesis.

Meta-narrative synthesis is explicitly rooted in a constructivist philosophy of science [108] in which knowledge is socially constructed rather than discovered, and what we take to be ‘truth’ is a matter of perspective. Reality has a pluralistic and plastic character, and there is no pre-existing ‘real world’ independent of human construction and language [109] . See Greenhalgh et al. [67] , [85] and Greenhalgh & Wong [97] for more discussion of the constructivist basis of meta-narrative synthesis.

In the case of purely quantitative or qualitative syntheses, it may be an easier matter to uncover unstated assumptions because they are likely to be shared with those of the primary studies in the genre. For example, grounded formal theory shares the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of grounded theory, rooted in the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism [110] – [111] and the philosophy of pragmatism [87] , [112] – [114] .

As with meta-narrative synthesis, meta-study developers identify constructivism as their interpretive philosophical foundation [54] , [88] . Epistemologically, constructivism focuses on how people construct and re-construct knowledge about a specific phenomenon, and has three main assumptions: (1) reality is seen as multiple, at times even incompatible with the phenomenon under consideration; (2) just as primary researchers construct interpretations from participants' data, meta-study researchers also construct understandings about the primary researchers' original findings. Thus, meta-synthesis is a construction of a construction, or a meta-construction; and (3) all constructions are shaped by the historical, social and ideological context in which they originated [54] . The key message here is that reports of any synthesis would benefit from an explicit identification of the underlying philosophical perspectives to facilitate a better understanding of the results, how they were derived, and how they are being interpreted.

4.7. Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis for each category of review is generally distinct. For the emerging synthesis approaches, the unit of analysis is specific to the intention. In meta-narrative synthesis it is the storyline in diverse research traditions; in rapid review or scoping review, it depends on the focus but could be a concept; and in realist synthesis, it is the theories rather than programs that are the units of analysis. The elements of theory that are important in the analysis are mechanisms of action, the context, and the outcome [107] .

For qualitative synthesis, the units of analysis are generally themes, concepts or theories, although in meta-study, the units of analysis can be research findings (“meta-data-analysis”), research methods (“meta-method”) or philosophical/theoretical perspectives (“meta-theory”) [54] . In quantitative synthesis, the units of analysis range from specific statistics for systematic reviews to effect size of the intervention for meta-analysis. More recently, some systematic reviews focus on theories [115] – [116] , therefore it depends on the research question. Similarly, within conventional literature synthesis the units of analysis also depend on the research purpose, focus and question as well as on the type of research methods incorporated into the review. What is important in all research syntheses, however, is that the unit of analysis needs to be made explicit. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

4.8. Strengths and Limitations

In this section, we discuss the overarching strengths and limitations of synthesis methodologies as a whole and then highlight strengths and weaknesses across each of our four categories of synthesis.

4.8.1. Strengths of Research Syntheses in General

With the vast proliferation of research reports and the increased ease of retrieval, research synthesis has become more accessible providing a way of looking broadly at the current state of research. The availability of syntheses helps researchers, practitioners, and policy makers keep up with the burgeoning literature in their fields without which evidence-informed policy or practice would be difficult. Syntheses explain variation and difference in the data helping us identify the relevance for our own situations; they identify gaps in the literature leading to new research questions and study designs. They help us to know when to replicate a study and when to avoid excessively duplicating research. Syntheses can inform policy and practice in a way that well-designed single studies cannot; they provide building blocks for theory that helps us to understand and explain our phenomena of interest.

4.8.2. Limitations of Research Syntheses in General

The process of selecting, combining, integrating, and synthesizing across diverse study designs and data types can be complex and potentially rife with bias, even with those methodologies that have clearly defined steps. Just because a rigorous and standardized approach has been used does not mean that implicit judgements will not influence the interpretations and choices made at different stages.

In all types of synthesis, the quantity of data can be considerable, requiring difficult decisions about scope, which may affect relevance. The quantity of available data also has implications for the size of the research team. Few reviews these days can be done independently, in particular because decisions about inclusion and exclusion may require the involvement of more than one person to ensure reliability.

For all types of synthesis, it is likely that in areas with large, amorphous, and diverse bodies of literature, even the most sophisticated search strategies will not turn up all the relevant and important texts. This may be more important in some synthesis methodologies than in others, but the omission of key documents can influence the results of all syntheses. This issue can be addressed, at least in part, by including a library scientist on the research team as required by some funding agencies. Even then, it is possible to miss key texts. In this review, for example, because none of us are trained in or conduct meta-analyses, we were not even aware that we had missed some new developments in this field such as meta-regression [117] – [118] , network meta-analysis [119] – [121] , and the use of individual patient data in meta-analyses [122] – [123] .

One limitation of systematic reviews and meta-analyses is that they rapidly go out of date. We thought this might be true for all types of synthesis, although we wondered if those that produce theory might not be somewhat more enduring. We have not answered this question but it is open for debate. For all types of synthesis, the analytic skills and the time required are considerable so it is clear that training is important before embarking on a review, and some types of review may not be appropriate for students or busy practitioners.

Finally, the quality of reporting in primary studies of all genres is variable so it is sometimes difficult to identify aspects of the study essential for the synthesis, or to determine whether the study meets quality criteria. There may be flaws in the original study, or journal page limitations may necessitate omitting important details. Reporting standards have been developed for some types of reviews (e.g., systematic review, meta-analysis, meta-narrative synthesis, realist synthesis); but there are no agreed upon standards for qualitative reviews. This is an important area for development in advancing the science of research synthesis.

4.8.3. Strengths and Limitations of the Four Synthesis Types

The conventional literature review and now the increasingly common integrative review remain important and accessible approaches for students, practitioners, and experienced researchers who want to summarize literature in an area but do not have the expertise to use one of the more complex methodologies. Carefully executed, such reviews are very useful for synthesizing literature in preparation for research grants and practice projects. They can determine the state of knowledge in an area and identify important gaps in the literature to provide a clear rationale or theoretical framework for a study [14] , [18] . There is a demand, however, for more rigour, with more attention to developing comprehensive search strategies and more systematic approaches to combining, integrating, and synthesizing the findings.

Generally, conventional reviews include diverse study designs and data types that facilitate comprehensiveness, which may be a strength on the one hand, but can also present challenges on the other. The complexity inherent in combining results from studies with diverse methodologies can result in bias and inaccuracies. The absence of clear guidelines about how to synthesize across diverse study types and data [18] has been a challenge for novice reviewers.

Quantitative systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been important in launching the field of evidence-based healthcare. They provide a systematic, orderly and auditable process for conducting a review and drawing conclusions [25] . They are arguably the most powerful approaches to understanding the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, especially when intervention studies on the same topic show very different results. When areas of research are dogged by controversy [25] or when study results go against strongly held beliefs, such approaches can reduce the uncertainty and bring strong evidence to bear on the controversy.

Despite their strengths, they also have limitations. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses do not provide a way of including complex literature comprising various types of evidence including qualitative studies, theoretical work, and epidemiological studies. Only certain types of design are considered and qualitative data are used in a limited way. This exclusion limits what can be learned in a topic area.

Meta-analyses are often not possible because of wide variability in study design, population, and interventions so they may have a narrow range of utility. New developments in meta-analysis, however, can be used to address some of these limitations. Network meta-analysis is used to explore relative efficacy of multiple interventions, even those that have never been compared in more conventional pairwise meta-analyses [121] , allowing for improved clinical decision making [120] . The limitation is that network meta-analysis has only been used in medical/clinical applications [119] and not in public health. It has not yet been widely accepted and many methodological challenges remain [120] – [121] . Meta-regression is another development that combines meta-analytic and linear regression principles to address the fact that heterogeneity of results may compromise a meta-analysis [117] – [118] . The disadvantage is that many clinicians are unfamiliar with it and may incorrectly interpret results [117] .

Some have accused meta-analysis of combining apples and oranges [124] raising questions in the field about their meaningfulness [25] , [28] . More recently, the use of individual rather than aggregate data has been useful in facilitating greater comparability among studies [122] . In fact, Tomas et al. [123] argue that meta-analysis using individual data is now the gold standard although access to the raw data from other studies may be a challenge to obtain.

The usefulness of systematic reviews in synthesizing complex health and social interventions has also been challenged [102] . It is often difficult to synthesize their findings because such studies are “epistemologically diverse and methodologically complex” [ [69] , p.21]. Rigid inclusion/exclusion criteria may allow only experimental or quasi-experimental designs into consideration resulting in lost information that may well be useful to policy makers for tailoring an intervention to the context or understanding its acceptance by recipients.

Qualitative syntheses may be the type of review most fraught with controversy and challenge, while also bringing distinct strengths to the enterprise. Although these methodologies provide a comprehensive and systematic review approach, they do not generally provide definitive statements about intervention effectiveness. They do, however, address important questions about the development of theoretical concepts, patient experiences, acceptability of interventions, and an understanding about why interventions might work.

Most qualitative syntheses aim to produce a theoretically generalizable mid-range theory that explains variation across studies. This makes them more useful than single primary studies, which may not be applicable beyond the immediate setting or population. All provide a contextual richness that enhances relevance and understanding. Another benefit of some types of qualitative synthesis (e.g., grounded formal theory) is that the concept of saturation provides a sound rationale for limiting the number of texts to be included thus making reviews potentially more manageable. This contrasts with the requirements of systematic reviews and meta-analyses that require an exhaustive search.

Qualitative researchers debate about whether the findings of ontologically and epistemological diverse qualitative studies can actually be combined or synthesized [125] because methodological diversity raises many challenges for synthesizing findings. The products of different types of qualitative syntheses range from theory and conceptual frameworks, to themes and rich descriptive narratives. Can one combine the findings from a phenomenological study with the theory produced in a grounded theory study? Many argue yes, but many also argue no.

Emerging synthesis methodologies were developed to address some limitations inherent in other types of synthesis but also have their own issues. Because each type is so unique, it is difficult to identify overarching strengths of the entire category. An important strength, however, is that these newer forms of synthesis provide a systematic and rigorous approach to synthesizing a diverse literature base in a topic area that includes a range of data types such as: both quantitative and qualitative studies, theoretical work, case studies, evaluations, epidemiological studies, trials, and policy documents. More than conventional literature reviews and systematic reviews, these approaches provide explicit guidance on analytic methods for integrating different types of data. The assumption is that all forms of data have something to contribute to knowledge and theory in a topic area. All have a defined but flexible process in recognition that the methods may need to shift as knowledge develops through the process.

Many emerging synthesis types are helpful to policy makers and practitioners because they are usually involved as team members in the process to define the research questions, and interpret and disseminate the findings. In fact, engagement of stakeholders is built into the procedures of the methods. This is true for rapid reviews, meta-narrative syntheses, and realist syntheses. It is less likely to be the case for critical interpretive syntheses.

Another strength of some approaches (realist and meta-narrative syntheses) is that quality and publication standards have been developed to guide researchers, reviewers, and funders in judging the quality of the products [108] , [126] – [127] . Training materials and online communities of practice have also been developed to guide users of realist and meta-narrative review methods [107] , [128] . A unique strength of critical interpretive synthesis is that it takes a critical perspective on the process that may help reconceptualize the data in a way not considered by the primary researchers [72] .

There are also challenges of these new approaches. The methods are new and there may be few published applications by researchers other than the developers of the methods, so new users often struggle with the application. The newness of the approaches means that there may not be mentors available to guide those unfamiliar with the methods. This is changing, however, and the number of applications in the literature is growing with publications by new users helping to develop the science of synthesis [e.g., [129] ]. However, the evolving nature of the approaches and their developmental stage present challenges for novice researchers.

4.9. When to Use Each Approach

Choosing an appropriate approach to synthesis will depend on the question you are asking, the purpose of the review, and the outcome or product you want to achieve. In Additional File 1 , we discuss each of these to provide guidance to readers on making a choice about review type. If researchers want to know whether a particular type of intervention is effective in achieving its intended outcomes, then they might choose a quantitative systemic review with or without meta-analysis, possibly buttressed with qualitative studies to provide depth and explanation of the results. Alternately, if the concern is about whether an intervention is effective with different populations under diverse conditions in varying contexts, then a realist synthesis might be the most appropriate.

If researchers' concern is to develop theory, they might consider qualitative syntheses or some of the emerging syntheses that produce theory (e.g., critical interpretive synthesis, realist review, grounded formal theory, qualitative meta-synthesis). If the aim is to track the development and evolution of concepts, theories or ideas, or to determine how an issue or question is addressed across diverse research traditions, then meta-narrative synthesis would be most appropriate.

When the purpose is to review the literature in advance of undertaking a new project, particularly by graduate students, then perhaps an integrative review would be appropriate. Such efforts contribute towards the expansion of theory, identify gaps in the research, establish the rationale for studying particular phenomena, and provide a framework for interpreting results in ways that might be useful for influencing policy and practice.

For researchers keen to bring new insights, interpretations, and critical re-conceptualizations to a body of research, then qualitative or critical interpretive syntheses will provide an inductive product that may offer new understandings or challenges to the status quo. These can inform future theory development, or provide guidance for policy and practice.

5. Discussion

What is the current state of science regarding research synthesis? Public health, health care, and social science researchers or clinicians have previously used all four categories of research synthesis, and all offer a suitable array of approaches for inquiries. New developments in systematic reviews and meta-analysis are providing ways of addressing methodological challenges [117] – [123] . There has also been significant advancement in emerging synthesis methodologies and they are quickly gaining popularity. Qualitative meta-synthesis is still evolving, particularly given how new it is within the terrain of research synthesis. In the midst of this evolution, outstanding issues persist such as grappling with: the quantity of data, quality appraisal, and integration with knowledge translation. These topics have not been thoroughly addressed and need further debate.

5.1. Quantity of Data

We raise the question of whether it is possible or desirable to find all available studies for a synthesis that has this requirement (e.g., meta-analysis, systematic review, scoping, meta-narrative synthesis [25] , [27] , [63] , [67] , [84] – [85] ). Is the synthesis of all available studies a realistic goal in light of the burgeoning literature? And how can this be sustained in the future, particularly as the emerging methodologies continue to develop and as the internet facilitates endless access? There has been surprisingly little discussion on this topic and the answers will have far-reaching implications for searching, sampling, and team formation.

Researchers and graduate students can no longer rely on their own independent literature search. They will likely need to ask librarians for assistance as they navigate multiple sources of literature and learn new search strategies. Although teams now collaborate with library scientists, syntheses are limited in that researchers must make decisions on the boundaries of the review, in turn influencing the study's significance. The size of a team may also be pragmatically determined to manage the search, extraction, and synthesis of the burgeoning data. There is no single answer to our question about the possibility or necessity of finding all available articles for a review. Multiple strategies that are situation specific are likely to be needed.

5.2. Quality Appraisal

While the issue of quality appraisal has received much attention in the synthesis literature, scholars are far from resolution. There may be no agreement about appraisal criteria in a given tradition. For example, the debate rages over the appropriateness of quality appraisal in qualitative synthesis where there are over 100 different sets of criteria and many do not overlap [49] . These differences may reflect disciplinary and methodological orientations, but diverse quality appraisal criteria may privilege particular types of research [49] . The decision to appraise is often grounded in ontological and epistemological assumptions. Nonetheless, diversity within and between categories of synthesis is likely to continue unless debate on the topic of quality appraisal continues and evolves toward consensus.

5.3. Integration with Knowledge Translation

If research syntheses are to make a difference to practice and ultimately to improve health outcomes, then we need to do a better job of knowledge translation. In the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) definition of knowledge translation (KT), research or knowledge synthesis is an integral component [130] . Yet, with few exceptions [131] – [132] , very little of the research synthesis literature even mentions the relationship of synthesis to KT nor does it discuss strategies to facilitate the integration of synthesis findings into policy and practice. The exception is in the emerging synthesis methodologies, some of which (e.g., realist and meta-narrative syntheses, scoping reviews) explicitly involve stakeholders or knowledge users. The argument is that engaging them in this way increases the likelihood that the knowledge generated will be translated into policy and practice. We suggest that a more explicit engagement with knowledge users in all types of synthesis would benefit the uptake of the research findings.

Research synthesis neither makes research more applicable to practice nor ensures implementation. Focus must now turn seriously towards translation of synthesis findings into knowledge products that are useful for health care practitioners in multiple areas of practice and develop appropriate strategies to facilitate their use. The burgeoning field of knowledge translation has, to some extent, taken up this challenge; however, the research-practice gap continues to plague us [133] – [134] . It is a particular problem for qualitative syntheses [131] . Although such syntheses have an important place in evidence-informed practice, little effort has gone into the challenge of translating the findings into useful products to guide practice [131] .

5.4. Limitations

Our study took longer than would normally be expected for an integrative review. Each of us were primarily involved in our own dissertations or teaching/research positions, and so this study was conducted ‘off the sides of our desks.’ A limitation was that we searched the literature over the course of 4 years (from 2008–2012), necessitating multiple search updates. Further, we did not do a comprehensive search of the literature after 2012, thus the more recent synthesis literature was not systematically explored. We did, however, perform limited database searches from 2012–2015 to keep abreast of the latest methodological developments. Although we missed some new approaches to meta-analysis in our search, we did not find any new features of the synthesis methodologies covered in our review that would change the analysis or findings of this article. Lastly, we struggled with the labels used for the broad categories of research synthesis methodology because of our hesitancy to reinforce the divide between quantitative and qualitative approaches. However, it was very difficult to find alternative language that represented the types of data used in these methodologies. Despite our hesitancy in creating such an obvious divide, we were left with the challenge of trying to find a way of characterizing these broad types of syntheses.

6. Conclusion

Our findings offer methodological clarity for those wishing to learn about the broad terrain of research synthesis. We believe that our review makes transparent the issues and considerations in choosing from among the four broad categories of research synthesis. In summary, research synthesis has taken its place as a form of research in its own right. The methodological terrain has deep historical roots reaching back over the past 200 years, yet research synthesis remains relatively new to public health, health care, and social sciences in general. This is rapidly changing. New developments in systematic reviews and meta-analysis, and the emergence of new synthesis methodologies provide a vast array of options to review the literature for diverse purposes. New approaches to research synthesis and new analytic methods within existing approaches provide a much broader range of review alternatives for public health, health care, and social science students and researchers.

Acknowledgments

KSM is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. Her work on this article was largely conducted as a Postdoctoral Fellow, funded by KRESCENT (Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training Program, reference #KRES110011R1) and the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta.

MM's work on this study over the period of 2008-2014 was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Applied Public Health Research Chair Award (grant #92365).

We thank Rachel Spanier who provided support with reference formatting.

List of Abbreviations (in Additional File 1 )

Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this article.

Authors' contributions: KSM co-designed the study, collected data, analyzed the data, drafted/revised the manuscript, and managed the project.

MP contributed to searching the literature, developing the analytic framework, and extracting data for the Additional File.

JB contributed to searching the literature, developing the analytic framework, and extracting data for the Additional File.

WN contributed to searching the literature, developing the analytic framework, and extracting data for the Additional File.

All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional Files: Additional File 1 – Selected Types of Research Synthesis

This Additional File is our dataset created to organize, analyze and critique the literature that we synthesized in our integrative review. Our results were created based on analysis of this Additional File.

• Teaching Tips

Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Stems For Use In Assessment [With 100+ Examples]

This comprehensive list of pre-created Bloom’s taxonomy question stems ensure students are critically engaging with course material

Jacob Rutka

One of the most powerful aspects of Bloom’s Taxonomy is that it offers you, as an educator, the ability to construct a curriculum to assess objective learning outcomes, including advanced educational objectives like critical thinking. Pre-created Bloom’s Taxonomy questions can also make planning discussions, learning activities, and formative assessments much easier.

For those unfamiliar with Bloom’s Taxonomy, it consists of a series of hierarchical levels (normally arranged in a pyramid) that build on each other and progress towards higher-order thinking skills. Each level contains verbs, such as “demonstrate” or “design,” that can be measured to gain greater insight into student learning.

Click here to download 100+ Bloom’s taxonomy question stems for your classroom and get everything you need to engage your students.

Table of Contents

• Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956)

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001)

Bloom’s taxonomy for adjunct professors, examples of bloom’s taxonomy question stems, additional bloom’s taxonomy example questions, higher-level thinking questions, bloom’s taxonomy (1956).

The original Bloom’s Taxonomy framework consists of six levels that build off of each other as the learning experience progresses. It was developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an American educational psychologist. Below are descriptions of each level:

• Knowledge: Identification and recall of course concepts learned
• Comprehension: Ability to grasp the meaning of the material 
• Application: Demonstrating a grasp of the material at this level by solving problems and creating projects
• Analysis: Finding patterns and trends in the course material
• Synthesis: The combining of ideas or concepts to form a working theory 
• Evaluation: Making judgments based on the information students have learned as well as their own insights

A group of educational researchers and cognitive psychologists developed the new and revised Bloom’s Taxonomy framework in 2001 to be more action-oriented. This way, students work their way through a series of verbs to meet learning objectives. Below are descriptions of each of the levels in revised Bloom’s Taxonomy:

• Remember: To bring an awareness of the concept to learners’ minds.
• Understand: To summarize or restate the information in a particular way.
• Apply: The ability to use learned material in new and concrete situations.
• Analyze: Understanding the underlying structure of knowledge to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion.
• Evaluate: Making judgments about the value of ideas, theories, items and materials.
• Create: Reorganizing concepts into new structures or patterns through generating, producing or planning.

Free Download: Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Stems and Examples

Bloom’s Taxonomy questions are a great way to build and design curriculum and lesson plans. They encourage the development of higher-order thinking and encourage students to engage in metacognition by thinking and reflecting on their own learning. In The Ultimate Guide to Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Stems , you can access more than 100 examples of Bloom’s Taxonomy questions examples and higher-order thinking question examples at all different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) question samples:

• Knowledge: How many…? Who was it that…? Can you name the…? 
• Comprehension: Can you write in your own words…? Can you write a brief outline…? What do you think could have happened next…?
• Application: Choose the best statements that apply… Judge the effects of… What would result …? 
• Analysis: Which events could have happened…? If … happened, how might the ending have been different? How was this similar to…?
• Synthesis: Can you design a … to achieve …? Write a poem, song or creative presentation about…? Can you see a possible solution to…?
• Evaluation: What criteria would you use to assess…? What data was used to evaluate…? How could you verify…?

Click here to get 100+ Bloom’s taxonomy question stems that’ll help engage students in your classroom.

Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (2001) question samples:

• Remember: Who…? What…? Where…? How…?
• Understand: How would you generalize…? How would you express…? What information can you infer from…?
• Apply: How would you demonstrate…? How would you present…? Draw a story map… 
• Analyze: How can you sort the different parts…? What can you infer about…? What ideas validate…? How would you categorize…?
• Evaluate: What criteria would you use to assess…? What sources could you use to verify…? What information would you use to prioritize…? What are the possible outcomes for…?
• Create: What would happen if…? List the ways you can…? Can you brainstorm a better solution for…? 

As we know, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework used in education to categorize levels of cognitive learning. Here are 10 Bloom’s Taxonomy example questions, each corresponding to one of the six levels in Bloom’s Taxonomy, starting from the lowest level (Remember) to the highest level (Create):

• Remember (Knowledge): What are the four primary states of matter? Can you list the main events of the American Civil War?
• Understand (Comprehension): How would you explain the concept of supply and demand to someone who is new to economics? Can you summarize the main idea of the research article you just read?
• Apply (Application): Given a real-world scenario, how would you use the Pythagorean theorem to solve a practical problem? Can you demonstrate how to conduct a chemical titration in a laboratory setting?
• Analyze (Analysis): What are the key factors contributing to the decline of a particular species in an ecosystem? How do the social and economic factors influence voting patterns in a specific region?
• Evaluate (Evaluation): Compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of two different programming languages for a specific project. Assess the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, providing recommendations for improvement.
• Create (Synthesis): Design a new and innovative product that addresses a common problem in society. Develop a comprehensive lesson plan that incorporates various teaching methods to enhance student engagement in a particular subject.

Download Now: Bloom’s Taxonomy Question Stems and Examples

Higher-level thinking questions are designed to encourage critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis of information. Here are eight examples of higher-level thinking questions that can be used in higher education:

• Critical Analysis (Analysis): “What are the ethical implications of the decision made by the characters in the novel, and how do they reflect broader societal values?”
• Problem-Solving (Application): “Given the current environmental challenges, how can we develop sustainable energy solutions that balance economic and ecological concerns?”
• Evaluation of Evidence (Evaluation): “Based on the data presented in this research paper, do you think the study’s conclusions are valid? Why or why not?”
• Comparative Analysis (Analysis): “Compare and contrast the economic policies of two different countries and their impact on income inequality.”
• Hypothetical Scenario (Synthesis): “Imagine you are the CEO of a multinational corporation. How would you navigate the challenges of globalization and cultural diversity in your company’s workforce?”
• Ethical Dilemma (Evaluation): “In a medical emergency with limited resources, how should healthcare professionals prioritize patients, and what ethical principles should guide their decisions?”
• Interdisciplinary Connection (Synthesis): “How can principles from psychology and sociology be integrated to address the mental health needs of a diverse student population in higher education institutions?”
• Creative Problem-Solving (Synthesis): “Propose a novel solution to reduce urban congestion while promoting eco-friendly transportation options. What are the potential benefits and challenges of your solution?”

These questions encourage students to go beyond simple recall of facts and engage in critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, and ethical considerations. They are often used to stimulate class discussions, research projects, and written assignments in higher education settings.

Click here to download 100+ Bloom’s taxonomy question stems

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How to Synthesize Written Information from Multiple Sources

Shona McCombes

Content Manager

B.A., English Literature, University of Glasgow

Shona McCombes is the content manager at Scribbr, Netherlands.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

When you write a literature review or essay, you have to go beyond just summarizing the articles you’ve read – you need to synthesize the literature to show how it all fits together (and how your own research fits in).

Synthesizing simply means combining. Instead of summarizing the main points of each source in turn, you put together the ideas and findings of multiple sources in order to make an overall point.

At the most basic level, this involves looking for similarities and differences between your sources. Your synthesis should show the reader where the sources overlap and where they diverge.

Unsynthesized Example

Franz (2008) studied undergraduate online students. He looked at 17 females and 18 males and found that none of them liked APA. According to Franz, the evidence suggested that all students are reluctant to learn citations style. Perez (2010) also studies undergraduate students. She looked at 42 females and 50 males and found that males were significantly more inclined to use citation software ( p < .05). Findings suggest that females might graduate sooner. Goldstein (2012) looked at British undergraduates. Among a sample of 50, all females, all confident in their abilities to cite and were eager to write their dissertations.

Synthesized Example

Studies of undergraduate students reveal conflicting conclusions regarding relationships between advanced scholarly study and citation efficacy. Although Franz (2008) found that no participants enjoyed learning citation style, Goldstein (2012) determined in a larger study that all participants watched felt comfortable citing sources, suggesting that variables among participant and control group populations must be examined more closely. Although Perez (2010) expanded on Franz’s original study with a larger, more diverse sample…

Step 1: Organize your sources

After collecting the relevant literature, you’ve got a lot of information to work through, and no clear idea of how it all fits together.

Before you can start writing, you need to organize your notes in a way that allows you to see the relationships between sources.

One way to begin synthesizing the literature is to put your notes into a table. Depending on your topic and the type of literature you’re dealing with, there are a couple of different ways you can organize this.

Summary table

A summary table collates the key points of each source under consistent headings. This is a good approach if your sources tend to have a similar structure – for instance, if they’re all empirical papers.

Each row in the table lists one source, and each column identifies a specific part of the source. You can decide which headings to include based on what’s most relevant to the literature you’re dealing with.

For example, you might include columns for things like aims, methods, variables, population, sample size, and conclusion.

For each study, you briefly summarize each of these aspects. You can also include columns for your own evaluation and analysis.

The summary table gives you a quick overview of the key points of each source. This allows you to group sources by relevant similarities, as well as noticing important differences or contradictions in their findings.

Synthesis matrix

A synthesis matrix is useful when your sources are more varied in their purpose and structure – for example, when you’re dealing with books and essays making various different arguments about a topic.

Each column in the table lists one source. Each row is labeled with a specific concept, topic or theme that recurs across all or most of the sources.

Then, for each source, you summarize the main points or arguments related to the theme.

The purposes of the table is to identify the common points that connect the sources, as well as identifying points where they diverge or disagree.

Step 2: Outline your structure

Now you should have a clear overview of the main connections and differences between the sources you’ve read. Next, you need to decide how you’ll group them together and the order in which you’ll discuss them.

For shorter papers, your outline can just identify the focus of each paragraph; for longer papers, you might want to divide it into sections with headings.

There are a few different approaches you can take to help you structure your synthesis.

If your sources cover a broad time period, and you found patterns in how researchers approached the topic over time, you can organize your discussion chronologically .

That doesn’t mean you just summarize each paper in chronological order; instead, you should group articles into time periods and identify what they have in common, as well as signalling important turning points or developments in the literature.

If the literature covers various different topics, you can organize it thematically .

That means that each paragraph or section focuses on a specific theme and explains how that theme is approached in the literature.

Source Used with Permission: The Chicago School

If you’re drawing on literature from various different fields or they use a wide variety of research methods, you can organize your sources methodologically .

That means grouping together studies based on the type of research they did and discussing the findings that emerged from each method.

If your topic involves a debate between different schools of thought, you can organize it theoretically .

That means comparing the different theories that have been developed and grouping together papers based on the position or perspective they take on the topic, as well as evaluating which arguments are most convincing.

Step 3: Write paragraphs with topic sentences

What sets a synthesis apart from a summary is that it combines various sources. The easiest way to think about this is that each paragraph should discuss a few different sources, and you should be able to condense the overall point of the paragraph into one sentence.

This is called a topic sentence , and it usually appears at the start of the paragraph. The topic sentence signals what the whole paragraph is about; every sentence in the paragraph should be clearly related to it.

A topic sentence can be a simple summary of the paragraph’s content:

“Early research on [x] focused heavily on [y].”

For an effective synthesis, you can use topic sentences to link back to the previous paragraph, highlighting a point of debate or critique:

“Several scholars have pointed out the flaws in this approach.” “While recent research has attempted to address the problem, many of these studies have methodological flaws that limit their validity.”

By using topic sentences, you can ensure that your paragraphs are coherent and clearly show the connections between the articles you are discussing.

As you write your paragraphs, avoid quoting directly from sources: use your own words to explain the commonalities and differences that you found in the literature.

Don’t try to cover every single point from every single source – the key to synthesizing is to extract the most important and relevant information and combine it to give your reader an overall picture of the state of knowledge on your topic.

Step 4: Revise, edit and proofread

Like any other piece of academic writing, synthesizing literature doesn’t happen all in one go – it involves redrafting, revising, editing and proofreading your work.

Checklist for Synthesis

•   Do I introduce the paragraph with a clear, focused topic sentence?
•   Do I discuss more than one source in the paragraph?
•   Do I mention only the most relevant findings, rather than describing every part of the studies?
•   Do I discuss the similarities or differences between the sources, rather than summarizing each source in turn?
•   Do I put the findings or arguments of the sources in my own words?
•   Is the paragraph organized around a single idea?
•   Is the paragraph directly relevant to my research question or topic?
•   Is there a logical transition from this paragraph to the next one?

Further Information

How to Synthesise: a Step-by-Step Approach

Help…I”ve Been Asked to Synthesize!

Learn how to Synthesise (combine information from sources)

How to write a Psychology Essay

GRE Verbal : Analysis and Synthesis in Single-Answer Questions

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for gre verbal, all gre verbal resources, example questions, example question #1 : single answer questions.

"The Chemistry of Cooking" by Will Floyd

Molecular gastronomy is a new take on cooking that has spread like wildfire through the culinary world in the last few decades. At its core, molecular gastronomy seeks to redefine and reimagine how food is cooked in restaurant kitchens, using technology, chemistry, and physics to transform pedestrian dishes into surprising forms and textures. These techniques create mystifying dining experiences, while using intimately familiar flavors. Chefs who use molecular gastronomy do not wish merely to be chemists or engineers, but are chefs above all else. To create a special dining experience, the chef begins first and foremost with the dish they wish to serve. Tools like an anti-griddle, a flat top that instantly freezes anything that touches it, or maltodextrin, an additive that can turn liquids into powder, are not there simply to play with the food. A molecular gastronomist will first think of the dish they want to serve, like fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Next, they will find a way to get the same flavors and textures in a unique way. The chicken might not be fried, but go through a process that will give it a crispy skin and juicy meat while never broaching hot oil. The mashed potatoes could become a light sauce, and then be put on an anti-griddle to give a new look, texture, and temperature. While the diner will have something that might look like a dessert or a soup, in actuality what they are having is a homestyle dish that they remember from childhood. This sense of familiarity is the ultimate goal of any chef utilizing molecular gastronomy.

A criticism of molecular gastronomy can be best summarized as __________ .

it is transforming the way people look at food

it is based around technology, chemistry, and physics

it uses an anti-griddle and maltodextrin

it is creating exciting new opportunities for diners

it is bringing unnecessary and unhelpful tools into a kitchen

The question asks for a criticism of molecular gastronomy. Looking over all of the answer choices, all but one choice state a fact about molecular gastronomy or are a compliment to molecular gastronomy. Only "it is bringing unnecessary and unhelpful tools to a kitchen" is truly a criticism.

Example Question #2 : Analysis And Synthesis In Single Answer Questions

Adapted from  Seven Discourses Delivered in the Royal Academy By the President  by Joshua Reynolds (1778)

All the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, upon close examination will be found to have their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or imperfection. But it is not every eye that perceives these blemishes. It must be an eye long used to the contemplation and comparison of these forms—and which, by a long habit of observing what any set of objects of the same kind have in common, that alone can acquire the power of discerning what each wants in particular. This long laborious comparison should be the first study of the painter who aims at the greatest style. By this means, he acquires a just idea of beautiful forms; he corrects nature by herself, her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original—and what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius are conducted. By this, Phidias acquired his fame. He wrought upon a sober principle what has so much excited the enthusiasm of the world—and by this method you, who have courage to tread the same path, may acquire equal reputation.

The author does NOT view imperfections in nature as __________ .

confounding

The author notes that "all the objects" in nature have "blemishes and defects." The author also notes that the "most beautiful forms" have a "weakness, minuteness, or imperfection." The only answer choice that makes sense with the passage is "abhorrent," meaning distasteful or offensive.

Example Question #3 : Analysis And Synthesis In Single Answer Questions

The following passage is adapted from  The God-Idea of the Ancients: or, Sex in Religion , by Elizabeth Burt Gamble (1897)

Regarding the introduction of Christianity into Ireland it is claimed by certain writers that the Irish did not receive the “new religion” from Greek missionaries; but when at the close of the cycle, a new solar deity, an avatar of Vishnu or Krishna was announced, and when missionaries from the East proclaimed the glad tidings of a risen Savior, the Irish people gladly accepted their teachings, not, however, as a new system, but as the fulfillment to them of the prophecy of the most ancient seers of the East, and as part and parcel of the religion of their forefathers. Therefore when the devotees of the Roman faith, probably about the close of the fifth century of the Christian era, attempted to “convert” Ireland, they found a religion differing from their own only in the fact that it was not subject to Rome, and was free from the many corruptions and superstitions which through the extreme ignorance and misapprehension of its Western adherents had been engrafted upon it.

The claim of "certain writers" referenced in the first sentence is __________ .

that the Irish wholeheartedly adopted Roman customs

that Greek missionaries brought Christianity to Ireland

that the Romans never came to Ireland

that the Irish adopted Christianity in their own way

the "new religion" never caught on in Ireland

The opening statement of the passage explicitly notes the "Irish did not receive the 'new religion' from Greek missionaries." The rest of the passage furthers the claim that the Irish adapted to Christianity at their own pace and largely from the inside.

"A Short History of Recent Zoos" by Will Floyd

Throughout the twentieth century, zoos underwent large-scale transformations. Before World War I, zoos were small parts of larger municipal parks, and featured sparse cages with little room for their inhabitants. This model held sway until mid-century, with many zoos struggling to remain open during the Great Depression and World War II. The successful zoos survived through making themselves cheap family entertainment. In the 1960s, zoos began to change in drastic ways. With the growing strength of environmental and animal rights movements, the public clamored for more naturalistic and spacious environments in which the animals could live.

The most emblematic of these transformations was the development of the Los Angeles Zoo. In 1966, the cramped and antiquated zoo used grants from the city government to move to a brand-new facility. Although the zoo moved just two miles away, the new location was exponentially bigger, and it featured fresh landscapes that resembled the animals’ natural habitats, instead of dilapidated cages. As the Los Angeles Zoo developed, it was able to work on preservation and conservation efforts for endangered species. New educational programs also became key elements of the Zoo’s mission. Now the old Zoo’s cages stand as ruins and reminders of what past generations saw when they visited years ago.

The author would suggest a new zoo should __________ .

build only sparse cages with few extra environments for the animals

not consult environmentalists or animal rights activists

look like pre-World War II zoos

ignore the desires of the public

focus on conservation, preservation, and educational programs

The author's main point throughout the passage is that zoos have changed for the better by becoming bigger, with more naturalistic environments, and through a focus on various kinds of programs. In particular, the author highlights the Los Angeles Zoo's conservation, preservation, and educational programs. It is safe to presume that the author views these as key elements of a modern zoo.

"Political Representation" by Will Floyd

Pundits often decry the gridlock in Washington, D.C. Partisanship frequently makes legislators oppose bills they have supported in the past. Political grandstanding regularly takes the place of reasoned compromise or deal-making. Many political scientists are trying to find ways to resolve these issues within constitutional boundaries. One of the more popular suggestions is a different voting system called proportional representation. Proportional representation operates under the theory that each vote will help place a candidate in the legislature, rather than the current winner take all method of elections in the United States. Under proportional representation, candidates do not run for a specific seat in a particular district, but instead are part of a ranked list of candidates for each political party; therefore, if a political party receives thirty percent of the votes, thirty percent of the seats will be held by this party. Critics of proportional representation claim the system gives too much power to fringe candidates and political parties, whose only goal would be to destroy the political system. This cynical view of proportional representation stems from the example of countries currently using proportional representation. As it is, political scientists who do argue for proportional representation are trying to find a way around the current problems that exist in the United States’ political system, and feel a third party might create new pressures on the two party system currently causing such problems. The advocates of proportional representation do not argue that proportional representation is a perfect system, but also argue that we are not currently using a perfect system and that we need something to change.

The author would agree with the statement that __________ .

the current political system in the United States is imperfect, but as good as it can be

proportional representation is only argued for by outsiders and crazy people

proportional representation could introduce new voices into the legislature

proportional representation would never work in the United States

the current political system in the United States works perfectly

The author's own opinions are largely kept away from the passage, but by discussing proportional representation in the manner it does, some thoughts can be deduced. The use of "a third party might create new pressures" as the final word in the argument does indicate this idea is close to what  the author truly believes.

Adapted from  The Significance of the Frontier in American History  by Frederick Jackson Turner (1893)

But the larger part of what has been distinctive and valuable in America's contribution to the history of the human spirit has been due to this nation's peculiar experience in extending its type of frontier into new regions—and in creating peaceful societies with new ideals in the successive vast and differing geographic provinces which together make up the United States. Directly or indirectly these experiences shaped the life of both the Eastern and Western States, and even reacted upon the Old World, influencing the direction of its thought and progress. This experience has been fundamental in the economic, political, and social characteristics of the American people and in their conceptions of their destiny.

Writing at the close of 1796, the French minister to the United States, M. Adet, reported to his government that Jefferson could not be relied on to be devoted to French interests, and he added that "Jefferson, I say, is American, and by that name, he cannot be sincerely our friend. An American is the born enemy of all European peoples." Obviously erroneous as are these words, there was an element of truth in them. If we would understand this element of truth, we must study the transforming influence of the American wilderness, remote from Europe, and by its resources and its free opportunities affording the conditions under which a new people, with new social and political types and ideals, could arise to play its own part in the world, and to influence Europe.

The author views the frontier as being __________ .

inconsequential to American identity

a key factor in America's development

unimportant to Europe

difficult to define and analyze

a frivolous element of American politics

The author outright states that the frontier "experience has been fundamental" for the American people. The author also argues that this frontier experience has affected Europe.

Example Question #1 : Analysis And Synthesis In Single Answer Questions

Adapted from The Idea of a University by John Henry Newman (1852)

I have been insisting, in my two preceding Discourses, first, on the cultivation of the intellect, as an end which may reasonably be pursued for its own sake; and next, on the nature of that cultivation, or what that cultivation consists in. Truth of whatever kind is the proper object of the intellect; its cultivation then lies in fitting it to apprehend and contemplate truth. Now the intellect in its present state, with exceptions which need not here be specified, does not discern truth intuitively, or as a whole. We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by going round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual correction, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and exercises of mind.

Such a union and concert of the intellectual powers, such an enlargement and development, such a comprehensiveness, is necessarily a matter of training. And again, such a training is a matter of rule. It is not mere application, however exemplary, which introduces the mind to truth, nor the reading many books, nor the getting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All this is short of enough. A man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge. He may not realize what his mouth utters; he may not see with his mental eye what confronts him; he may have no grasp of things as they are, or at least he may have no power at all of advancing one step forward of himself, in consequence of what he has already acquired, no power of discriminating between truth and falsehood, of sifting out the grains of truth from the mass, of arranging things according to their real value, and, if I may use the phrase, of building up ideas. Such a power is the result of a scientific formation of mind; it is an acquired faculty of judgment, of clear-sightedness, of sagacity, of wisdom, of philosophical reach of mind, and of intellectual self-possession and repose—qualities which do not come of mere acquirement. The bodily eye, the organ for apprehending material objects, is provided by nature; the eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit.

This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disciplined for its own sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Education; and though there is no one in whom it is carried as far as is conceivable, or whose intellect would be a pattern of what intellects should be made, yet there is scarcely any one but may gain an idea of what real training is, and at least look towards it, and make its true scope and result, not something else, his standard of excellence; and numbers there are who may submit themselves to it, and secure it to themselves in good measure. And to set forth the right standard, and to train according to it, and to help forward all students towards it according to their various capacities, this I conceive to be the business of a University.

Based on the information provided in this passage, which of the following would you expect to be found in the previous chapters of the book from which this passage is drawn?

None of the other answer choices

A diatribe against modernity and modern education.

A plea to end all vocational education.

A defense for the use of Newman's particular religious creed in education.

A discussion that included some defense of learning for the sole sake of learning.

The whole topic of this selection is a defense of a general education that is not particular. At the beginning of the selection, Newman explicitly remarks about his previous "discourses." Among the topics there discussed, he apparently included, "The cultivation of the intellect, as an end which may reasonably be pursued for its own sake." Although this does not mean that he completely argued his case for this point, the implication is that he did make some defense for forms of learning that are not immediately useful (but are good in themselves). This does not mean that he necessarily argued against other forms of knowledge. You cannot go this far in your interpretation!

Example Question #1 : Literal Comprehension

Passage adapted from H.G Wells's  Anticipations  (1901)

Democracy of the modern type—manhood suffrage and so forth—became a conspicuous phenomenon in the world only in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. Its genesis is so intimately connected with the first expansion of the productive element in the State, through mechanism and a co-operative organization, as to point at once to a causative connection. The more closely one looks into the social and political life of the eighteenth century the more plausible becomes this view. New and potentially influential social factors had begun to appear—the organizing manufacturer, the intelligent worker, the skilled tenant, and the urban abyss, and the traditions of the old land-owning non-progressive aristocratic monarchy that prevailed in Christendom, rendered it incapable—without some destructive shock or convulsion—of any re-organization to incorporate or control these new factors. In the case of the British Empire an additional stress was created by the incapacity of the formal government to assimilate the developing civilization of the American colonies. Everywhere there were new elements, not as yet clearly analyzed or defined, arising as mechanism arose; everywhere the old traditional government and social system, defined and analyzed all too well, appeared increasingly obstructive, irrational, and feeble in its attempts to include and direct these new powers.

But now comes a point to which I am inclined to attach very great importance. The new powers were as yet shapeless. It was not the conflict of a new organization with the old. It was the preliminary dwarfing and deliquescence of the mature old beside the embryonic mass of the new. It was impossible then—it is, I believe, only beginning to be possible now—to estimate the proportions, possibilities, and inter-relations of the new social orders out of which a social organization has still to be built in the coming years. No formula of definite reconstruction had been evolved, or has even been evolved yet, after a hundred years. And these swelling inchoate new powers, whose very birth condition was the crippling, modification, or destruction of the old order, were almost forced to formulate their proceedings for a time, therefore, in general affirmative propositions that were really in effect not affirmative propositions at all, but propositions of repudiation and denial. "These kings and nobles and people privileged in relation to obsolescent functions cannot manage our affairs"—that was evident enough, that was the really essential question at that time, and since no other effectual substitute appeared ready made, the working doctrine of the infallible judgment of humanity in the gross, as distinguished from the quite indisputable incapacity of sample individuals, became, in spite of its inherent absurdity, a convenient and acceptable working hypothesis.

According to the author, what was the major reason for the British Empire taking part in the democratization of the period in discussion?

They were too distant from their colonies, which forced them to allow for local governance.

Their colonialism led to a clash of cultures and civic ideals.

They were unable to accommodate the cultural changes arising from the colonies' way of life.

There was no one, isolated factor that led to its development.

Their governmental apparatus was obsolete and based on an inflexible model of regal governance.

This question likely tempts you to answer in some way that reacts to the selection speaking of the "incapacity of the formal government to assimilate the developing civilization of the American colonies." Notice, however, that this was merely an "additional stress" on top of the others. The safest bet is to say that it was a constellation of factors that influenced shifts in governmental policy in the British Empire. Yes, it had its unique challenges; however none of these unique challenges were the  sole factor leading to the alterations in British governance according to Wells.

Passage adapted from H.G Wells'  Anticipations  (1901)

According to the author, what was the primary mode of operating for the new powers that brought forth democracy of the modern type?

Rejection of the old order

The establishment of new, urban structures of life

Forced exile of former rulers

Wholesale mayhem in civic violence

Revolutionary battling and war

The key passage for this question is: "In general affirmative propositions that were really in effect not affirmative propositions at all, but propositions of repudiation and denial..." Wells then goes on to describe how even seemingly "affirmative" statements of action were at base merely denials or repudiations of the existing order of things. Hence, at the heart of the action of this period, there was (according to Wells) a rejection of what came before, though it was not certain what should be the forms taken by the new order to be created.

Example Question #1 : Drawing Conclusions And Making Inferences In Single Answer Questions

Adapted from  The Frontier in American History , by Frederick Jackson Turner

It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes the French __________ .

have no diplomatic relations with America

automatically hate every American because of the frontier

are distinguished from the Americans because of America's interaction with the frontier

have no conception of the frontier or the wilderness

are isolated from the influence of the frontier

The French are only mentioned by quoting the French ambassador from 1796, regarding his dislike of Jefferson. The author only agrees with the Ambassador to say the French and Americans are different, although the author believes it is due to the frontier.

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Analysis vs. Synthesis

What's the difference.

Analysis and synthesis are two fundamental processes in problem-solving and decision-making. Analysis involves breaking down a complex problem or situation into its constituent parts, examining each part individually, and understanding their relationships and interactions. It focuses on understanding the components and their characteristics, identifying patterns and trends, and drawing conclusions based on evidence and data. On the other hand, synthesis involves combining different elements or ideas to create a new whole or solution. It involves integrating information from various sources, identifying commonalities and differences, and generating new insights or solutions. While analysis is more focused on understanding and deconstructing a problem, synthesis is about creating something new by combining different elements. Both processes are essential for effective problem-solving and decision-making, as they complement each other and provide a holistic approach to understanding and solving complex problems.

Further Detail

Introduction.

Analysis and synthesis are two fundamental processes in various fields of study, including science, philosophy, and problem-solving. While they are distinct approaches, they are often interconnected and complementary. Analysis involves breaking down complex ideas or systems into smaller components to understand their individual parts and relationships. On the other hand, synthesis involves combining separate elements or ideas to create a new whole or understanding. In this article, we will explore the attributes of analysis and synthesis, highlighting their differences and similarities.

Attributes of Analysis

1. Focus on details: Analysis involves a meticulous examination of individual components, details, or aspects of a subject. It aims to understand the specific characteristics, functions, and relationships of these elements. By breaking down complex ideas into smaller parts, analysis provides a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

2. Objective approach: Analysis is often driven by objectivity and relies on empirical evidence, data, or logical reasoning. It aims to uncover patterns, trends, or underlying principles through systematic observation and investigation. By employing a structured and logical approach, analysis helps in drawing accurate conclusions and making informed decisions.

3. Critical thinking: Analysis requires critical thinking skills to evaluate and interpret information. It involves questioning assumptions, identifying biases, and considering multiple perspectives. Through critical thinking, analysis helps in identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, enabling a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

4. Reductionist approach: Analysis often adopts a reductionist approach, breaking down complex systems into simpler components. This reductionist perspective allows for a detailed examination of each part, facilitating a more in-depth understanding of the subject matter. However, it may sometimes overlook the holistic view or emergent properties of the system.

5. Diagnostic tool: Analysis is commonly used as a diagnostic tool to identify problems, errors, or inefficiencies within a system. By examining individual components and their interactions, analysis helps in pinpointing the root causes of issues, enabling effective problem-solving and optimization.

Attributes of Synthesis

1. Integration of ideas: Synthesis involves combining separate ideas, concepts, or elements to create a new whole or understanding. It aims to generate novel insights, solutions, or perspectives by integrating diverse information or viewpoints. Through synthesis, complex systems or ideas can be approached holistically, considering the interconnections and interdependencies between various components.

2. Creative thinking: Synthesis requires creative thinking skills to generate new ideas, concepts, or solutions. It involves making connections, recognizing patterns, and thinking beyond traditional boundaries. By embracing divergent thinking, synthesis enables innovation and the development of unique perspectives.

3. Systems thinking: Synthesis often adopts a systems thinking approach, considering the interactions and interdependencies between various components. It recognizes that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and aims to understand emergent properties or behaviors that arise from the integration of these parts. Systems thinking allows for a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena.

4. Constructive approach: Synthesis is a constructive process that builds upon existing knowledge or ideas. It involves organizing, reorganizing, or restructuring information to create a new framework or understanding. By integrating diverse perspectives or concepts, synthesis helps in generating comprehensive and innovative solutions.

5. Design tool: Synthesis is often used as a design tool to create new products, systems, or theories. By combining different elements or ideas, synthesis enables the development of innovative and functional solutions. It allows for the exploration of multiple possibilities and the creation of something new and valuable.

Interplay between Analysis and Synthesis

While analysis and synthesis are distinct processes, they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often complement each other and are interconnected in various ways. Analysis provides the foundation for synthesis by breaking down complex ideas or systems into manageable components. It helps in understanding the individual parts and their relationships, which is essential for effective synthesis.

On the other hand, synthesis builds upon the insights gained from analysis by integrating separate elements or ideas to create a new whole. It allows for a holistic understanding of complex phenomena, considering the interconnections and emergent properties that analysis alone may overlook. Synthesis also helps in identifying gaps or limitations in existing knowledge, which can then be further analyzed to gain a deeper understanding.

Furthermore, analysis and synthesis often involve an iterative process. Initial analysis may lead to the identification of patterns or relationships that can inform the synthesis process. Synthesis, in turn, may generate new insights or questions that require further analysis. This iterative cycle allows for continuous refinement and improvement of understanding.

Analysis and synthesis are two essential processes that play a crucial role in various fields of study. While analysis focuses on breaking down complex ideas into smaller components to understand their individual parts and relationships, synthesis involves integrating separate elements or ideas to create a new whole or understanding. Both approaches have their unique attributes and strengths, and they often complement each other in a cyclical and iterative process. By employing analysis and synthesis effectively, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena, generate innovative solutions, and make informed decisions.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues.

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Supplement to Analysis

Definitions and descriptions of analysis.

The older a word, the deeper it reaches. (Wittgenstein NB , 40) { §6.5 }

This supplement collects together various definitions and descriptions of analysis that have been offered in the history of philosophy (including all the classic ones), to indicate the range of different conceptions and the issues that arise. (There are also some remarks on related topics such as analyticity, definition, and methodology more generally.) In most cases, abbreviated references are given; full details can be found in the Annotated Bibliography on Analysis, in the section mentioned in curly brackets after the relevant definition or description. Where there is more than one passage quoted from a particular author, passages are numbered in chronological order of composition (as far as that can be determined).

• Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy , 1999, ed. Robert Audi

Concise Oxford Dictionary , 1976, ed. J. B. Sykes

• Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , 1925, ed. James Mark Baldwin

A Kant Dictionary , 1995, by Howard Caygill

Oxford dictionary of philosophy , 1996, by simon blackburn, philosophielexikon , 1997, ed. a. hügli and p. lübcke, routledge encyclopedia of philosophy , 1998, entry under ‘analytical philosophy’ by thomas baldwin, routledge encyclopedia of philosophy , 1998, entry under ‘conceptual analysis’ by robert hanna, alexander of aphrodisias, arnauld, antoine and nicole, pierre, ayer, a. j., bentham, jeremy, bergson, henri, bos, henk j. m., bradley, f. h., brandom, robert b., carnap, rudolf, cassirer, ernst, cohen, l. jonathan, collingwood, r. g., davidson, donald, de chardin, teilhard, derrida, jacques, descartes, rené, frege, gottlob, geertz, clifford, hegel, georg w.f., heidegger, martin, hobbes, thomas, hodges, wilfrid, holton, gerald, husserl, edmund, kant, immanuel, lakatos, imre, leibniz, gottfried wilhelm, lichtenberg, georg christoph, locke, john, lodge, david, mendelssohn, moses, moore, g. e., newton, isaac, nietzsche, friedrich, poincaré, jules henri, polya, george, quine, w.v.o., rorty, richard, rosen, stanley, russell, bertrand, ryle, gilbert, schiller, friedrich, sellars, wilfrid, soames, scott, stebbing, l. susan.

• Strawson, F. Peter

Urmson, J. O.

Whitehead, alfred north, wilson, john cook, wittgenstein, ludwig, 1. definitions of analysis, cambridge dictionary of philosophy , 2nd ed., 1999, ed. robert audi.

the process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple or ultimate constituents. { §1.1 }

1. Resolution into simpler elements by analysing (opp. synthesis ); statement of result of this; … 2. (Math.) Use of algebra and calculus in problem-solving. { §1.1 }

Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , 1925, ed. James Mark Baldwin, Vol. I

The isolation of what is more elementary from what is more complex by whatever method. { §1.1 }

Kant combines two senses of analysis in his work, one derived from Greek geometry, the other from modern physics and chemistry. Both remain close to the original Greek sense of analysis as a ‘loosening up’ or ‘releasing’, but each proceed in different ways. The former proceeds ‘lemmatically’ by assuming a proposition to be true and searching for another known truth from which the proposition may be deduced. The latter proceeds by resolving complex wholes into their elements. { §4.5 }

The process of breaking a concept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is displayed. { §1.1 }

Auflösung, Zerlegung in Bestandteile, im Gegensatz zu Synthese. { §1.1 }

Philosophical analysis is a method of inquiry in which one seeks to assess complex systems of thought by ‘analysing’ them into simpler elements whose relationships are thereby brought into focus. { §1.1 }

The theory of conceptual analysis holds that concepts – general meanings of linguistic predicates – are the fundamental objects of philosophical inquiry, and that insights into conceptual contents are expressed in necessary ‘conceptual truths’ (analytic propositions). { §1.1 }

Annotated Bibliography, §1.1

2. Descriptions of Analysis

And he [Aristotle] called them Analytics because the resolution of every compound into those things out of which the synthesis [is made] is called analysis . For analysis is the converse of synthesis. Synthesis is the road from the principles to those things that derive from the principles, and analysis is the return from the end to the principles. For geometers are said to analyze when, beginning from the conclusion they go up to the principles and the problem, following the order of those things which were assumed for the demonstration of the conclusion {1}. But he also uses analysis who reduces composite bodies into simple bodies {2}, and he analyzes who divides the word into the parts of the word {3}; also he who divides the parts of the word into the syllables {4}; and he who divides these into their components {5}. And they are severally said to analyse who reduce compound syllogisms into simple ones {6}, and simple ones into the premisses out of which they get their being {7}. And further, resolving imperfect syllogisms into perfect ones is called analyzing {8}. And they call analysis the reducing of the given syllogism into the proper schemata {9}. And it is especially in this meaning of analysis that these are entitled Analytics , for he describes for us a method at the end of the first book with which we shall be able to do this. ( Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics , §1.2.1 (7, lines 11-33); tr. in Gilbert 1960, 32; the square brackets are in the original translation, the curly brackets have been added here to highlight the nine senses that Alexander distinguishes) { §2.4 , §3.2 }

it is not the same thing to take an argument in one’s hand and then to see and solve its faults, as it is to be able to meet it quickly while being subjected to questions; for what we know, we often do not know in a different context. Moreover, just as in other things speed or slowness is enhanced by training, so it is with arguments too, so that supposing we are unpractised, even though a point is clear to us, we are often too late for the right moment. Sometimes too it happens as with diagrams; for there we can sometimes analyse the figure, but not construct it again: so too in refutations, though we know on what the connexion of the argument depends, we still are at a loss to split the argument apart. ( SR , 16, 175a20-30) { §2.4 }

We must next explain how to reduce syllogisms to the figures previously described; this part of our inquiry still remains. For if we examine the means by which syllogisms are produced, and possess the ability to discover them, and can also analyse [ analuoimen ] the syllogisms when constructed into the figures previously described, our original undertaking will be completed. (( PrA , I, 32, 46b40-47a6; Tredennick tr. slightly modified) { §2.4 }

Thus it is evident (1) that the types of syllogism which cannot be analysed in these figures [viz., second figure syllogisms into the third figure, and third figure syllogisms into the second figure] are the same as those which we saw could not be analysed into the first figure; and (2) that when syllogisms are reduced to the first figure these alone are established per impossibile .

It is evident, then, from the foregoing account [taken as including the discussion prior to chapter 45] how syllogisms should be reduced; and also that the figures can be analysed into one another. ( PrA , I, 45, 51a40-b5; Tredennick tr., substituting ‘analysed’ for ‘resolved’) { §2.4 }

If it were impossible to prove truth from falsehood, it would be easy to make analyses [ analuein ]; for then the propositions would convert from necessity. Let A be something that is the case; and if A is the case, then these things are the case (things which I know to be the case—call them B ). From the latter, then, I shall prove that the former is the case. (In mathematics conversion is more common because mathematicians assume nothing incidental—and in this too they differ from those who argue dialectically—but only definitions.) ( PoA , I, 12, 78a6-13) { §2.4 }

We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall convince, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does any one else deliberate about his end. Having set the end, they consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last. For the person who deliberates seems to inquire and analyse in the way described as though he were analysing a geometrical construction (not all inquiry appears to be deliberation—for instance mathematical inquiries—but all deliberation is inquiry), and what is last in the order of analysis seems to be first in the order of becoming. And if we come on an impossibility, we give up the search, e.g. if we need money and this cannot be got; but if a thing appears possible we try to do it. ( NE , III, 3, 1112b8-27) { §2.4 }

The art of arranging a series of thoughts properly, either for discovering the truth when we do not know it, or for proving to others what we already know, can generally be called method.

Hence there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth, which is known as analysis , or the method of resolution , and which can also be called the method of discovery . The other is for making the truth understood by others once it is found. This is known as synthesis , or the method of composition , and can also be called the method of instruction .

Analysis does not usually deal with the entire body of a science, but is used only for resolving some issue. ( LAT , 233-4) { §4.1 }

Now analysis consists primarily in paying attention to what is known in the issue we want to resolve. The entire art is to derive from this examination many truths that can lead us to the knowledge we are seeking.

Suppose we wondered whether the human soul is immortal, and to investigate it we set out to consider the nature of the soul. First we would notice that it is distinctive of the soul to think, and that it could doubt everything without being able to doubt whether it is thinking, since doubting is itself a thought. Next we would ask what thinking is. Since we would see nothing contained in the idea of thought that is contained in the idea of the extended substance called body, and since we could even deny of thought everything belonging to body - such as having length, width, and depth, having different parts, having a certain shape, being divisible, etc. - without thereby destroying the idea we have of thought, from this we would conclude that thought is not at all a mode of extended substance, because it is the nature of a mode not to be able to be conceived while the thing of which it is a mode is denied. From this we infer, in addition, that since thought is not a mode of extended substance, it must be the attribute of another substance. Hence thinking substance and extended substance are two really distinct substances. It follows from this that the destruction of one in no way brings about the destruction of the other, since even extended substance is not properly speaking destroyed, but all that happens in what we call destruction is nothing more than the change or dissolution of several parts of matter which exist forever in nature. Likewise it is quite easy to judge that in breaking all the gears of a clock no substance is destroyed, although we say that the clock is destroyed. This shows that since the soul is in no way divisible or composed of parts, it cannot perish, and consequently is immortal.

This is what we call analysis or resolution . We should notice, first, that in this method - as in the one called composition - we should practice proceeding from what is better known to what is less known. For there is no true method which could dispense with this rule.

Second, it nevertheless differs from the method of composition in that these known truths are taken from a particular examination of the thing we are investigating, and not from more general things as is done in the method of instruction. Thus in the example we presented, we did not begin by establishing these general maxims: that no substance perishes, properly speaking; that what is called destruction is only a dissolution of parts; that therefore what has no parts cannot be destroyed, etc. Instead we rose by stages to these general notions.

Third, in analysis we introduce clear and evident maxims only to the extent that we need them, whereas in the other method we establish them first, as we will explain below.

Fourth and finally, these two methods differ only as the route one takes in climbing a mountain from a valley differs from the route taken in descending from the mountain into the valley, or as the two ways differ that are used to prove that a person is descended from St. Louis. One way is to show that this person had a certain man for a father who was the son of a certain man, and that man was the son of another, and so on up to St. Louis. The other way is to begin with St. Louis and show that he had a certain child, and this child had others, thereby descending to the person in question. This example is all the more appropriate in this case, since it is certain that to trace an unknown genealogy, it is necessary to go from the son to the father, whereas to explain it after finding it, the most common method is to begin with the trunk to show the descendants. This is also what is usually done in the sciences where, after analysis is used to find some truth, the other method is employed to explain what has been found.

This is the way to understand the nature of analysis as used by geometers. Here is what it consists in. Suppose a question is presented to them, such as whether it is true or false that something is a theorem, or whether a problem is possible or impossible; they assume what is at issue and examine what follows from that assumption. If in this examination they arrive at some clear truth from which the assumption follows necessarily, they conclude that the assumption is true. Then starting over from the end point, they demonstrate it by the other method which is called composition . But if they fall into some absurdity or impossibility as a necessary consequence of their assumption, they conclude from this that the assumption is false and impossible.

This is what may be said in a general way about analysis, which consists more in judgment and mental skill than in particular rules. ( LAT , 236-8) { §4.1 }

It is advisable to stress the point that philosophy, as we understand it, is wholly independent of metaphysics, inasmuch as the analytic method is commonly supposed by its critics to have a metaphysical basis. Being misled by the associations of the word ‘analysis’, they assume that philosophical analysis is an activity of dissection; that it consists in ‘breaking up’ objects into their constituent parts, until the whole universe is ultimately exhibited as an aggregate of ‘bare particulars’, united by external relations. If this were really so, the most effective way of attacking the method would be to show that its basic presupposition was nonsensical. For to say that the universe was an aggregate of bare particulars would be as senseless as to say that it was Fire or Water or Experience. It is plain that no such possible observation would enable to veify such an assertion. But, so far as I know, this line of criticism is in fact never adopted. The critics content themselves with pointing out that few, if any, of the complex objects in the world are simply the sum of their parts. They have a structure, an organic unity, which distinguishes them, as genuine wholes, from mere aggregates. But the analyst, so it is said, is obliged by his atomistic metaphysics to regard an object consisting of parts a , b , c , and d , in a distinctive configuration as being simply a + b + c + d , and thus gives an entirely false account of its nature.

If we follow the Gestalt psychologists, who of all men talk most constantly about genuine wholes, in defining such a whole as one in which the properties of every part depend to some extent on its position in the whole, then we may accept it as an empirical fact that there exist genuine, or organic, wholes. And if the analytic method involved a denial of this fact, it would indeed be a faulty method. But, actually, the validity of the analytic method is not dependent on any empirical, much less any metaphysical, presupposition about the nature of things. For the philosopher, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way in which we speak about them.

In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character – that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly, we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we shall see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact.

It follows that philosophy does not in any way compete with science. The difference in type between philosophical and scientific propositions is such that they cannot conceivably contradict one another. And this makes it clear that the possibility of philosophical analysis is independent of any empirical assumptions. That it is independent of any metaphysical assumptions should be even more obvious still. For it is absurd to suppose that the provision of definitions, and the study of their formal consequences, involves the nonsensical assertion that the world is composed of bare particulars, or any other metaphysical dogma.

What has contributed as much as anything to the prevalent misunderstanding of the nature of philosophical analysis is the fact that propositions and questions which are really linguistic are often expressed in such a way that they appear to be factual. A striking instance of this is provided by the proposition that a material thing cannot be in two places at once. This looks like an empirical proposition, and is constantly invoked by those who desire to prove that it is possible for an empirical proposition to be logically certain. But a more critical inspection shows that it is not empirical at all, but linguistic. It simply records the fact that, as the result of certain verbal conventions, the proposition that two sense-contents occur in the same visual or tactual sense-field is incompatible with the proposition that they belong to the same material thing. And this is indeed a necessary fact. But it has not the least tendency to show that we have certain knowledge about the empirical properties of objects. For it is necessary only because we happen to use the relevant words in a particular way. There is no logical reason why we should not so alter our definitions that the sentence ‘A thing cannot be in two places at once’ comes to express a self-contradiction instead of a necessary truth. (1936, 75-7) { §6.7 }

From our assertion that philosophy provides definitions, it must not be inferred that it is the function of the philosopher to compile a dictionary, in the ordinary sense. For the definitions which philosophy is required to provide are of a different kind from those which we expect to find in dictionaries. In a dictionary we look mainly for what may be called explicit definitions; in philosophy, for definitions in use . ...

We define a symbol in use , not by saying that it is synonymous with some other symbol, but by showing how the sentences in which it significantly occurs can be translated into equivalent sentences, which contain neither the definiendum itself, nor any of its synonyms. A good illustration of this process is provided by Bertrand Russell’s so-called theory of descriptions, which is not a theory at all in the ordinary sense, but an indication of the way in which all phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ are to be defined. ( Ibid ., 80-1) { §6.7 }

[A serious mistake in my account in Language, Truth and Logic ] was my assumption that philosophical analysis consisted mainly in the provision of ‘definitions in use’. It is, indeed, true that what I describe as philosophical analysis is very largely a matter of exhibiting the inter-relationship of different types of propositions; but the cases in which this process actually yields a set of definitions are the exception rather than the rule. ...

... Thus, when Professor Moore suggests that to say that ‘existence is not a predicate’ may be a way of saying that ‘there is some very important difference between the way in which “exist” is used in such a sentence as “Tame tigers exist” and the way in which “growl” is used in “Tame tigers growl”’, he does not develop his point by giving rules for the translation of one set of sentences into another. What he does is to remark that whereas it makes good sense to say ‘All tame tigers growl’ or ‘Most tame tigers growl’ it would be nonsense to say ‘All tame tigers exist’ or ‘Most tame tigers exist’. Now this may seem a rather trivial point for him to make, but in fact it is philosophically illuminating. For it is precisely the assumption that existence is a predicate that gives plausibility to ‘the ontological argument’; and the ontological argument is supposed to demonstrate the existence of a God. Consequently Moore by pointing out a peculiarity in the use of the word ‘exist’ helps to protect us from a serious fallacy; so that his procedure, though different from that which Russell follows in his theory of descriptions, tends to achieve the same philosophical end. (1946, 31-3) { §6.7 }

By the word paraphrasis may be designated that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition, having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity. ( EL , 246) { §5.6 }

By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common both to it and other objects. To analyse, therefore, is to express a thing as a function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the new object which we are studying and others which we believe we know already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it may perfect the always imperfect translation. It goes on, therefore, to infinity. But intuition, if intuition is possible, is a simple act. (1903, 6-7) { §5.1 }

[Analysis] operates always on the immobile, whilst intuition places itself in mobility, or, what comes to the same thing, in duration. There lies the very distinct line of demarcation between intuition and analysis. The real, the experienced and the concrete are recognised by the fact that they are variability itself, the element by the fact that it is invariable. And the element is invariable by definition, being a diagram, a simplified reconstruction, often a mere symbol, in any case a motionless view of the moving reality. (1903, 40-1) { §5.1 }

Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests, I freely admit, on ideas which in the end we find clear; but these ideas have gradually become clear through the use made of them; they owe most of their clearness to the light which the facts, and the applications to which they led, have by reflection shed on them - the clearness of a concept being scarcely anything more at bottom than the certainty, at last obtained, of manipulating the concept profitably. At its origin, more than one of these concepts must have appeared obscure, not easily reconcilable with the concepts already admitted into science, and indeed very near the borderline of absurdity. This means that science does not proceed by an orderly dovetailing together of concepts predestined to fit each other exactly. True and fruitful ideas are so many close contacts with currents of reality, which do not necessarily converge on the same point. However the concepts in which they lodge themselves manage somehow, by rubbing off each other's corners, to settle down well enough together. (1903, 74) { §5.1 }

It may help to be reminded that many philosophers who might allow themselves to be described as “analysts” have been strongly influenced by the work of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. For while all three have been engaged in “clarification of meaning” they have done so in different and distinctive ways; and the resulting divergences in conceptions of philosophical method have not yet been reconciled. This makes it hard to give any simple account of what is meant today by “philosophical analysis”. (1950a, 2) { §6.1 }

A man who had to describe “philosophical analysis” might resort to talking about a climate of opinion. The weather, he might say, is congenial to empiricists, naturalists, agnostics; the well acclimatized have admired the two Principia’s and the Tractatus and have read a hundred pages of Hume for one of Kant. Here rhetoric is viewed with suspicion and enthusiasm barely tolerated; this is a land of “prose writers, hoping to be understood” [J.M. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability , 1921, preface].

... If a formula or a slogan is wanted, it is easy enough to say that these writers (like Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein before them) are engaged in clarification of meaning . ... And if those who are best at the work of clarification might feel embarrassed to provide a satisfactory analysis of “analysis”, that is perhaps no cause for apology or alarm. For it is a mark of life to resist arbitrary confinement, and “philosohical analysis” is still much alive. (1950a, 12-13) { §6.1 }

Analysis comprises mathematical methods for finding the solutions (in geometry: the constructions) of problems or the proofs of theorems, doing so by introducing unknowns. (2001, 129) { §4.2 }

It is a very common and most ruinous superstition to suppose that analysis is no alteration, and that, whenever we distinguish, we have at once to do with divisible existence. It is an immense assumption to conclude, when a fact comes to us as a whole, that some parts of it may exist without any sort of regard for the rest. Such naive assurance of the outward reality of all mental distinctions, such touching confidence in the crudest identity of thought and existence, is worthy of the school which so loudly appeals to the name of Experience. ... If it is true in any sense (and I will not deny it) that thought in the end is the measure of things, yet at least this is false, that the divisions we make within a whole all answer to elements whose existence does not depend on the rest. It is wholly unjustifiable to take up a complex, to do any work we please upon it by analysis, and then simply predicate as an adjective of the given these results of our abstraction. These products were never there as such, and in saying, as we do, that as such they are there, we falsify the fact. You can not always apply in actual experience that coarse notion of the whole as the sum of its parts into which the school of ‘experience’ so delights to torture phenomena. If it is wrong in physiology to predicate the results, that are reached by dissection, simply and as such of the living body, it is here infinitely more wrong. The whole that is given to us is a continuous mass of perception and feeling; and to say of this whole, that any one element would be what it is there, when apart from the rest, is a very grave assertion. We might have supposed it not quite self-evident, and that it was possible to deny it without open absurdity. ( PL , §64/ WLM , 77-8) { §5.6 }

judgement is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence always is analysis and synthesis in one. ( AR , 149/ WLM , 158) { §5.6 }

At any moment my actual experience, however relational its contents, is in the end non-relational. No analysis into relations and terms can ever exhaust its nature or fail in the end to belie its essence. What analysis leaves for ever outstanding is no mere residue, but is a vital condition of the analysis itself. Everything which is got out into the form of an object implies still the felt background against which the object comes, and, further, the whole experience of both feeling and object is a non-relational immediate felt unity. The entire relational consciousness, in short, is experienced as falling within a direct awareness. This direct awareness is itself non-relational. It escapes from all attempts to exhibit it by analysis as one or more elements in a relational scheme, or as that scheme itself, or as a relation or relations, or as the sum or collection of any of these abstractions. And immediate experience not only escapes, but it serves as the basis on which the analysis is made. Itself is the vital element within which every analysis still moves, while, and so far as, and however much, that analysis transcends immediacy. ( ETR , 176/ WLM , 280-1) { §5.6 }

I would rather now lay more stress on the logical vice of all Analysis and Abstraction – so far as that means taking any feature in the Whole of Things as ultimately real except in its union with the Whole. ( Collected Works of F.H. Bradley: Selected Correspondence 1905-1924 , Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 1999, 275)

Analysis and synthesis I take in the end to be two aspects of one principle … Every analysis proceeds from and on the basis of a unity ... The point before us is the question as to how, without separation in its existence, we can discriminate ideally in analysis. ( ETR , 300)

Socratic method is a way of bringing our practices under rational control by expressing them explicitly in a form in which they can be confronted with objections and alternatives, a form in which they can be exhibited as the conclusions of inferences seeking to justify them on the basis of premises advanced as reasons, and as premises in further inferences exploring the consequences of accepting them. (2000, 56) { §6.9 }

I think of analytic philosophy as having at its center a concern with semantic relations between what I will call ‘vocabularies’. … Its characteristic form of question is whether and in what way one can make sense of the meanings expressed by one kind of locution interms of the meanings expressed by another kind of locution. So, for instance, two early paradigmatic projects were to show that everything expressible in the vocabulary of number-theory, and again, everything expressible using definite descriptions, is expressible already in the vocabulary of first-order quantificational logic with identity.

The nature of the key kind of semantic relation between vocabularies has been variously characterized during the history of analytic philosophy: as analysis, definition, paraphrase, translation, reduction of different sorts, truth-making, and various kinds of supervenience—to name just a few contenders. In each case, however, it is characteristic of classical analytic philosophy that logical vocabulary is accorded a privileged role in specifying these semantic relations. It has always been taken at least to be licit to appeal to logical vocabulary in elaborating the relation between analysandum and analysans —target vocabulary and base vocabulary—and, according to stronger versions of this thesis, that may be the only vocabulary it is licit to employ in that capacity. I will refer to this aspect of the analytic project as its commitment to ‘ semantic logicism ’. (2006, Lecture One, §1) { §6.9 }

What I want to call the “classical project of analysis”, then, aims to exhibit the meanings expressed by various target vocabularies as intelligible by means of the logical elaboration of the meanings expressed by base vocabularies thought to be privileged in some important respects—epistemological, ontological, or semantic—relative to those others. This enterprise is visible in its purest form in what I have called the “core programs” of empiricism and naturalism, in their various forms. In my view the most significant conceptual development in this tradition—the biggest thing that ever happened to it—is the pragmatist challenge to it that was mounted during the middle years of the twentieth century. Generically, this movement of thought amounts to a displacement from the center of philosophical attention of the notion of meaning in favor of that of use : in suitably broad senses of those terms, replacing concern with semantics by concern with pragmatics . ( Ibid ., Lecture One, §2) { §6.9 }

the analysis or, more precisely, quasi-analysis of an entity that is essentially an indivisible unit into several quasi-constituents means placing the entity in several kinship contexts on the basis of a kinship relation, where the unit remains undivided. (1928a, §71; English tr. by Rolf A. George slightly altered) { §6.7 }

The logical analysis of a particular expression consists in the setting-up of a linguistic system and the placing of that expression in this system. (1936, 143) { §6.7 }

That part of the work of philosophers which may be held to be scientific in its nature—excluding the empirical questions which can be referred to empirical science—consists of logical analysis. The aim of logical syntax is to provide a system of concepts, a language, by the help of which the results of logical analysis will be exactly formulable. Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science —that is to say, by the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences, for the logic of science is nothing other than the logical syntax of the language of science . (1937, xiii) { §6.7 }

The task of making more exact a vague or not quite exact concept used in everyday life or in an earlier stage of scientific or logical development, or rather of replacing it by a newly constructed, more exact concept, belongs among the most important tasks of logical analysis and logical construction. We call this the task of explicating, or of giving an explication for, the earlier concept … (1947, 8-9) { §6.7 }

By the procedure of explication we mean the transformation of an inexact, prescientific concept, the explicandum , into a new exact concept, the explicatum . Although the explicandum cannot be given in exact terms, it should be made as clear as possible by informal explanations and examples. ...

The term ‘explicatum’ has been suggested by the following two usages. Kant calls a judgement explicative if the predicate is obtained by analysis of the subject. Husserl, in speaking about the synthesis of identification between a confused, nonarticulated sense and a subsequently intended distinct, articulated sense, calls the latter the ‘Explikat’ of the former. (For both uses see Dictionary of philosophy [1942], ed. D. Runes, p. 105). What I mean by ‘explicandum’ and ‘explicatum’ is to some extent similar to what C.H. Langford calls ‘analysandum’ and ‘analysans’: “the analysis then states an appropriate relation of equivalence between the analysandum and the analysans” [Langford 1942, 323 { §6.4 }]; he says that the motive of an analysis “is usually that of supplanting a relatively vague idea by a more precise one” ( ibid ., p. 329).

(Perhaps the form ‘explicans’ might be considered instead of ‘explicatum’; however, I think that the analogy with the terms ‘definiendum’ and ‘definiens’ would not be useful because, if the explication consists in giving an explicit definition, then both the definiens and the definiendum in this definition express the explicatum, while the explicandum does not occur.) The procedure of explication is here understood in a wider sense than the procedures of analysis and clarification which Kant, Husserl, and Langford have in mind. The explicatum (in my sense) is in many cases the result of analysis of the explicandum (and this has motivated my choice of the terms); in other cases, however, it deviates deliberately from the explicandum but still takes its place in some way; this will become clear by the subsequent examples. (1950, 3) { §6.7 }

[T]he sense of all objective judgments reduces to a final original relation, which can be expressed in different formulations as the relation of “form” to “content”, as the relation of “universal” to “particular”, as the relation of “validity [ Geltung ]” to “being [ Sein ]”. Whatever designation one may finally choose here, what is alone decisive is that the basic relation itself is to be retained as a strictly unitary relation, which can only be designated through the two opposed moments that enter into it – but never constructed out of them, as if they were independent constituents present in themselves. The original relation is not to be defined in such a way that the “universal” somehow “subsists” next to or above the “particular” – the form somehow separate from the content – so that the two are then melded with one another by means of some or another fundamental synthesis of knowledge. Rather, the unity of mutual determination constitutes the absolutely first datum, behind which one can go back no further, and which can only be analyzed via the duality of two “viewpoints” in an artificially isolating process of abstraction. It is the basic flaw of all metaphysical epistemologies that they always attempt to reinterpret this duality of “moments” as a duality of “elements”. (1913, 13-14; cited and tr. by Friedman 2000, 34) { §5.4 }

conceptual analysis typically relates one kind of reason for using a certain word to another. (1986, 51) { §6.9 }

When philosophical analysis proceeds from intuitively sanctioned premisses to a reasoned conclusion, it may be described as moving from analysandum to analysans. It seeks to ensure that any muddles or inconsistencies in our unreasoned inclinations and passive prejudices are replaced by an explicitly formulated, consciously co-ordinated, adequately reasoned, and freely adopted system of acceptable principles. (1986, 96) { §6.9 }

Socrates was essentially the inventor of a method. ... His revolt against the study of nature was essentially a revolt against observation in favour of thought; and whereas mathematical method, as an example of thought, had already been discovered by his predecessors, his own discovery was that a similar method, for which he invented an appropriate technique, could be applied to ethical questions. This technique, as he himself recognized, depended on a principle which is of great importance to any theory of philosophical method: the principle that in a philosophical inquiry what we are trying to do is not to discover something of which until now we have been ignorant, but to know better something which in some sense we knew already; not to know it better in the sense of coming to know more about it, but to know it better in the sense of coming to know it in a different and better way—actually instead of potentially, or explicitly instead of implicitly, or in whatever terms the theory of knowledge chooses to express the difference: the difference itself has been a familiar fact ever since Socrates pointed it out. (1933, 10-11) { §5.6 }

[The] work of disentangling and arranging questions, which ... I [call] analysis, may be alternatively described as the work of detecting presuppositions. ... The analysis which detects absolute presuppositions I call metaphysical analysis; but as regards procedure and the qualifications necessary to carry it out there is no difference whatever between metaphysical analysis and analysis pure and simple ... (1940, 39-40) { §5.6 }

It is only by analysis that any one can ever come to know either that he is making any absolute presuppositions at all or what absolute presuppositions he is making.

Such analysis may in certain cases proceed in the following manner. If the inquirer can find a person to experiment upon who is well trained in a certain type of scientific work, intelligent and earnest in his devotion to it, and unaccustomed to metaphysics, let him probe into various presuppositions that his ‘subject’ has been taught to make in the course of his scientific education, and invite him to justify each or alternatively to abandon it. If the ‘inquirer’ is skilful and the ‘subject’ the right kind of man, these invitations will be contemplated with equanimity, and even with interest, so long as relative presuppositions are concerned. But when an absolute presupposition is touched, the invitation wil be rejected, even with a certain degree of violence.

The rejection is a symptom that the ‘subject’, co-operating with the work of analysis, has come to see that the presupposition he is being asked to justify or abandon is an absolute presupposition; and the violence with which it is expressed is a symptom that he feels the importance of this absolute presupposition for the kind of work to which he is devoted. This is what ... I called being ‘ticklish in one’s absolute presuppositions’; and the reader will see that this ticklishness is a sign of intellectual health combined with a low degree of analytical skill. A man who is ticklish in that way is a man who knows, ‘instinctively’ as they say, that absolute presuppositions do not need justification. ( Ibid. , 43-4) { §5.6 }

metaphysical analysis, the discovery that certain presuppositions actually made are absolute presuppositions, is an integral part or an indispensable condition, you can put it whichever way you like, of all scientific work.( Ibid. , 84) { §5.6 }

In philosophy we are used to definitions, analyses, reductions. Typically these are intended to carry us from concepts better understood, or clear, or more basic epistemologically or ontologically, to others we want to understand. The method I have suggested fits none of these categories. I have proposed a looser relation between concepts to be illuminated and the relatively more basic. (‘Radical Interpretation’, 1972, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 137)

Unlike the primitives who gave a face to every moving thing, or the early Greeks who defined all the aspects and forces of nature, modern man is obsessed by the need to depersonalise (or impersonalise) all that he most admires. There are two reasons for this tendency. The first is analysis , that marvellous instrument of scientific research to which we owe all our advances but which, breaking down synthesis after synthesis, allows one soul after another to escape, leaving us confronted with a pile of dismantled machinery, and evanescent particles. The second reason lies in the discovery of the sidereal world, so vast that it seems to do away with all proportion between our own being and the dimensions of the cosmos around us. ( The Phenomenon of Man , 1955, 282; tr. Bernard Wall, Fontana, 1965; tr. first publ. 1959)

Up until now the idea of philosophy remained defined in a formal way as an idea of an infinite task theoria . Could a history of this infinite theoretical life, which merges itself in its efforts and failures with a simple realization of the self , take on the value of a genetic description? Will the history of the “transcendental motive” through all the stages of European philosophy, enlighten us at last on the genesis of transcendental subjectivity? But such a history presupposes the possibility of such a going backward, the possibility of finding again the originary sense of the former presents as such. It implies the possibility of a transcendental “regression” ( Ruckfrage ) through a history that is intelligible and transparent to consciousness, a history whose sedimentations can be unmade and remade without alteration. ( The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , The University of Chicago Press, 2003, 161; tr. Marian Hobson)

[discussing his ‘Rule Four’: “ We need a method if we are to investigate the truth of things ”] … the human mind has within it a sort of spark of the divine, in which the first seeds of useful ways of thinking are sown, seeds which, however neglected and stifled by studies which impede them, often bear fruit of their own accord. This is our experience in the simplest of sciences, arithmetic and geometry: we are well aware that the geometers of antiquity employed a sort of analysis which they went on to apply to the solution of every problem, though they begrudged revealing it to posterity. At the present time a sort of arithmetic called ‘algebra’ is flourishing, and this is achieving for numbers what the ancients did for figures. ( Rules for the Direction of the Mind , in PW , I, 16-17) { §4.2 }

As for the method of demonstration, this divides into two varieties: the first proceeds by analysis and the second by synthesis.

Analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered methodically and as it were a priori , so that if the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the thing his own and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered it for himself. But this method contains nothing to compel belief in an argumentative or inattentive reader; for if he fails to attend even to the smallest point, he will not see the necessity of the conclusion. Moreover there are many truths which - although it is vital to be aware of them - this method often scarcely mentions, since they are transparently clear to anyone who gives them his attention.

Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite method where the search is, as it were, a posteriori (though the proof itself is often more a priori than it is in the analytic method). It demonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if anyone denies one of the conclusions it can be shown at once that it is contained in what has gone before, and hence the reader, however argumentative or stubborn he may be, is compelled to give his assent. However, this method is not as satisfying as the method of analysis, nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered.

It was synthesis alone that the ancient geometers usually employed in their writings. But in my view this was not because they were utterly ignorant of analysis, but because they had such a high regard for it that they kept it to themselves like a sacred mystery.

Now it is analysis which is the best and truest method of instruction, and it was this method alone which I employed in my Meditations . As for synthesis, which is undoubtedly what you are asking me to use here, it is a method which it may be very suitable to deploy in geometry as a follow-up to analysis, but it cannot so conveniently be applied to these metaphysical subjects.

The difference is that the primary notions which are presupposed for the demonstration of geometrical truths are readily accepted by anyone, since they accord with the use of our senses. Hence there is no difficulty there, except in the proper deduction of the consequences, which can be done even by the less attentive, provided they remember what has gone before. Moreover, the breaking down of propositions to their smallest elements is specifically designed to enable them to be recited with ease so that the student recalls them whether he wants to or not.

In metaphysics by contrast there is nothing which causes so much effort as making our perception of the primary notions clear and distinct. Admittedly, they are by their nature as evident as, or even more evident than, the primary notions which the geometers study; but they conflict with many preconceived opinions derived from the senses which we have got into the habit of holding from our earliest years, and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdraw their minds from corporeal things, so far as is possible, will achieve perfect knowledge of them. Indeed, if they were put forward in isolation, they could easily be denied by those who like to contradict just for the sake of it. (‘Second Set of Replies’, in PW , II, 110-11) { §4.2 }

[interpolated into the text of the Elements ] What is analysis and what is synthesis. Analysis is the assumption of that which is sought as if it were admitted [and the arrival] by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true. Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted [and the arrival] by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true. ( E , Book XIII, Prop. 1; Vol. III, 442, where Heath comments on the interpolation) { §2.2 }

[In replying to the objections that Husserl had raised in his Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891) to Frege’s Grundlagen definitions] If words and combinations of words refer to [ bedeuten ] ideas, then for any two of them there are only two possibilities: either they designate the same idea or they designate different ideas. In the former case it is pointless to equate them by means of a definition: this is ‘an obvious circle’; in the latter case it is wrong. These are also the objections the author raises, one of them regularly. A definition is also incapable of analysing the sense, for the analysed sense just is not the original one. In using the word to be explained, I either think clearly everything I think when I use the defining expression: we then have the ‘obvious circle’; or the defining expression has a more richly articulated sense, in which case I do not think the same thing in using it as I do in using the word to be explained: the definition is then wrong. One would think that a definition was unobjectionable in the case where the word to be explained had as yet no sense at all, or where we were asked explicitly to regard its sense as non-existent so that it was first given a sense by the definition. But in the last case too, the author refutes the definition by reminding us of the difference between the ideas (p. 107). To evade all objections, one would accordingly have to create a new verbal root and form a word out of it. This reveals a split between psychological logicians and mathematicians. What matters to the former is the sense of the words, as well as the ideas which they fail to distinguish from the sense; whereas what matters to the latter is the thing itself: the Bedeutung of the words. The reproach that what is defined is not the concept but its extension actually affects all mathematical definitions. For the mathematician, it is no more right and no more wrong to define a conic as the line of intersection of a plane with the surface of a circular cone than to define it as a plane curve with an equation of the second degree in parallel coordinates. His choice of one or the other of these expressions or of some other one is guided solely by reasons of convenience and is made irrespective of the fact that the expressions have neither the same sense nor evoke the same ideas. I do not intend by this that a concept and its extension are one and the same, but that coincidence in extension is a necessary and sufficient criterion for the occurrence between concepts of the relation that corresponds to identity [ Gleichheit ] between objects. ( RH , 319-20/ FR , 225-6) { §6.2 }

We come to definitions . Definitions proper must be distinguished from elucidations [ Erläuterungen ]. In the first stages of any discipline we cannot avoid the use of ordinary words. But these words are, for the most part, not really appropriate for scientific purposes, because they are not precise enough and fluctuate in their use. Science needs technical terms that have precise and fixed Bedeutungen , and in order to come to an understanding about these Bedeutungen and exclude possible misunderstandings, we provide elucidations. Of course in so doing we have again to use ordinary words, and these may display defects similar to those which the elucidations are intended to remove. So it seems that we shall then have to provide further elucidations. Theoretically one will never really achieve one’s goal in this way. In practice, however, we do manage to come to an understanding about the Bedeutungen of words. Of course we have to be able to count on a meeting of minds, on others’ guessing what we have in mind. But all this precedes the construction of a system and does not belong within a system. In constructing a system it must be assumed that the words have precise Bedeutungen and that we know what they are. ( LM , 224/ FR , 313) { §6.2 }

We have ... to distinguish two quite different cases :

1. We construct a sense out of its constituents and introduce an entirely new sign to express this sense. This may be called a ‘constructive definition’ [‘ aufbauende Definition ’], but we prefer to call it a ‘definition’ tout court .

2. We have a simple sign with a long-established use. We believe that we can give a logical analysis [ Zerlegung ] of its sense, obtaining a complex expression which in our opinion has the same sense. We can only allow something as a constituent of a complex expression if it has a sense we recognize. The sense of the complex expression must be yielded by the way in which it is put together. That it agrees with the sense of the long established simple sign is not a matter for arbitrary stipluation, but can only be recognized by an immediate insight. No doubt we speak of a definition in this case too. It might be called an ‘analytic definition’ [‘ zerlegende Definition ’] to distinguish it from the first case. But it is better to eschew the word ‘definition’ altogether in this case, because what we should here like to call a definition is really to be regarded as an axiom. In this second case there remains no room for an arbitrary stipulation, because the simple sign already has a sense. Only a sign which as yet has no sense can have a sense arbitrarily assigned to it. So we shall stick to our original way of speaking and call only a constructive definition a definition. According to that a definition is an arbitrary stipulation which confers a sense on a simple sign which previously had none. This sense has, of course, to be expressed by a complex sign whose sense results from the way it is put together.

Now we still have to consider the difficulty we come up against in giving a logical analysis when it is problematic whether this analysis is correct.

Let us assume that A is the long-established sign (expression) whose sense we have attempted to analyse logically by constructing a complex expression that gives the analysis. Since we are not certain whether the analysis is successful, we are not prepared to present the complex expression as one which can be replaced by the simple sign A . If it is our intention to put forward a definition proper, we are not entitled to choose the sign A , which already has a sense, but we must choose a fresh sign B , say, which has the sense of the complex expression only in virtue of the definition. The question now is whether A and B have the same sense. But we can bypass this question altogether if we are constructing a new system from the bottom up; in that case we shall make no further use of the sign A – we shall only use B . We have introduced the sign B to take the place of the complex expression in question by arbitrary fiat and in this way we have conferred a sense on it. This is a definition in the proper sense, namely a constructive definition.

If we have managed in this way to construct a system for mathematics without any need for the sign A , we can leave the matter there; there is no need at all to answer the question concerning the sense in which – whatever it may be – this sign had been used earlier. In this way we court no objections. However, it may be felt expedient to use sign A instead of sign B . But if we do this, we must treat it as an entirely new sign which had no sense prior to the definition. We must therefore explain that the sense in which this sign was used before the new system was constructed is no longer of any concern to us, that its sense is to be understood purely from the constructive definition that we have given. In constructing the new system we can take no account, logically speaking, of anything in mathematics that existed prior to the new system. Everything has to be made anew from the ground up. Even anything that we may have accomplished by our analytical activities is to be regarded only as preparatory work which does not itself make any appearance in the new system itself.

Perhaps there still remains a certain unclarity. How is it possible, one may ask, that it should be doubtful whether a simple sign has the same sense as a complex expression if we know not only the sense of the simple sign, but can recognize the sense of the complex one from the way it is put together? The fact is that if we really do have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, then it cannot be doubtful whether it agrees with the sense of the complex expression. If this is open to question although we can clearly recognize the sense of the complex expression from the way it is put together, then the reason must lie in the fact that we do not have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, but that its outlines are confused as if we saw it through a mist. The effect of the logical analysis of which we spoke will then be precisely this – to articulate the sense clearly. Work of this kind is very useful; it does not, however, form part of the construction of the system, but must take place beforehand. Before the work of construction is begun, the building stones have to be carefully prepared so as to be usable; i.e. the words, signs, expressions, which are to be used, must have a clear sense, so far as a sense is not to be conferred on them in the system itself by means of a constructive definition.

We stick then to our original conception: a definition is an arbitrary stipulation by which a new sign is introduced to take the place of a complex expression whose sense we know from the way it is put together. A sign which hitherto had no sense acquires the sense of a complex expression by definition. ( LM , 227-9/ FR , 317-8) { §6.2 }

Analysis … is sorting out the structures of signification … and determining their social ground and import. ( The Interpretation of Cultures , New York: Basic Books, 1973, 9)

Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape. ( Ibid ., 20)

The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar. To break an idea up into its original elements is to return to its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea, but rather constitute the immediate property of the self. This analysis, to be sure, only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar, fixed, and inert determinations. But what is thus separated and non-actual is an essential moment; for it is only because the concrete does divide itself, and make itself into something non-actual, that it is self-moving. The activity of dissolution is the power and work of the Understanding , the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle that remains self-enclosed and, like substance, holds its moments together, is an immediate relationship, one therefore which has nothing astonishing about it. But that an accident as such, detached from what circumscribes it, what is bound and is actual only in its context with others, should attain an existence of its own and a separate freedom—this is the tremendous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure ‘I’. Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength, Beauty hates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject, which by giving determinateness an existence in its own element supersedes abstract immediacy, i.e. the immediacy which barely is, and thus is authentic substance: that being or immediacy whose mediation is not outside of it but which is this mediation itself. ( PS , ‘Preface’, §32, 18-19)

[Summary of above passage offered by J.N. Findlay] The analysis of an idea is the removal of its familiarity, its reduction to elements that are the true possessions of the thinking self. In such reduction the idea itself changes and renders itself unreal. The force which effects analysis is that of the Understanding, the most remarkable and absolute of powers, the power of the thinking self and also of death. It is above all marvellous that this thinking self should be able to isolate, and to look at apart, what can only exist as an aspect or ‘moment’ in a living whole. Thinking Spirit can, however, only grasp such a whole by first tearing it into parts, each of which it must look at separately for a while, before putting them back in the whole. The thinking self must destroy an immediate, existent unity in order to arrive at a unity which includes mediation, and is in fact mediation itself. (‘Analysis of the Text’, §32, in PS , 499) { §5.2 }

What we are trying to bring to light here by means of phenomenological analysis in regard to the intentional structure of production is not contrived and fabricated but already present in the everyday, pre-philosophical productive behaviour of the Dasein. In producing, the Dasein lives in such an understanding of being without conceiving it or grasping it as such. (1927, §12, 114-15) { §5.8 }

every method by which we investigate the causes of things is either compositive, or resolutive, or partly compositive, partly resolutive. And the resolutive is usually called analytic, while the compositive is usually called synthetic. ( Logica , ‘On Method’, §1, 289) { §4.1 }

What philosophers seek to know. Philosophers seek scientific knowledge either simply or indefinitely, that is, they seek to knkow as much as they can when no definite question is proposed or the cause of some definite phenomenon or at least to discover something definite, such as what the cause of light is, or of heat, or gravity, of a figure which has been proposed, and similar things; or in what subject some proposed accident inheres; or which of many accidents is above all conducive to the production of some proposed effect; or in what way particular proposed causes ought to be conjoined in order to produce a definite effect. Because of the variety of the things sought for, sometimes the analytic method, sometimes the synthetic method, and sometimes both ought to be applied.

The first part, by which principles are found, is purely analytic. Seeing that the causes of all singulars are composed from the causes of universals or simples, it is necessary for those who are looking simply for scientific knowledge, which consists of the knowledge of the causes of all things insofar as this can be achieved, to know the causes of universals or those accidents which are common to all bodies, that is, to every material thing, before they know the causes of singular things, that is, of the accidents by which one thing is distinguished from another. Again, before the causes of those things can be known, it is necessary to know which things are universals. But since universals are contained in the nature of singular things, they must be unearthed by reason, that is, by resolution. For example, let any conception or idea of a singular thing be proposed, say a square. The square is resolved into: plane, bounded by a certain number of lines equal to one another, and right angles . Therefore we have these universals or components of every material thing: line, plane (in which a surface is contained), being bounded, angle, rectitude , and equality . If anyone finds the causes or origin of these, he will put them together as the cause of the square. Again, if he proposes to himself the conception of gold, the ideas of being solid, visible, and heavy (that is, of tending to the center of the earth or of motion downwards) and many others more universal than gold itself, which can be resolved further until one arrives at the most universal, will come from this by resolution. And by this same method of resolving things into other things one will know what those things are, of which, when their causes are known what those things are, of which, when their causes are known and composed one by one, the causes of all singular things are known. We thus conclude that the method of investigating the universal notions of things is purely analytic. ( Ibid ., §§ 3-4, 291-5) { §4.1 }

The method of scientific knowledge, civil as well as natural, [starting] from sense-experience and [going] to principles is analytic; while [starting] from principles is synthetic. ( Ibid ., §7, 301) { §4.1 }

it is obvious that in the investigation of causes there is a need partly for the analytic method, partly for the synthetic method. The analytic method is needed for understanding the circumstances of the effect one by one; the synthetic method for putting together those things which, single in themselves, act as one. ( Ibid ., §10, 311) { §4.1 }

that art of geometers which they call logistic is ... the method according to which by supposing that the thing asked about is true they come upon in reasoning either things known [to be true], from which they can prove the truth of the thing sought, or [they come upon] impossibilities, from which it can be understood that what was supposed [to be true] was false. ( Ibid ., §19, 329) { §4.1 }

[Logical analysis] stands somewhere between translating and paraphrasing. ( Logic , Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, 86)

The terms “analysis” and “synthesis” bring to mind, on the one hand, certain methodological practices in the works of Plato, Descartes, Newton, Kant, Hegel, and others and, on the other hand, techniques in fields as disparate as chemistry and logic, mathematics and psychology. The width of this spectrum of associations alerts us to the realization that at the base of these two related terms there lies a specific methodological thema-antithema ... pair. Indeed, it is one of the most pervasive and fundamental ones, in science and outside. This chapter attempts to uncover and identify this thematic content, to clarify the meanings and uses of the terms “analysis” and “synthesis”, and especially to distinguish among four general meanings: (1) Analysis and Synthesis, and particularly synthesis, used in the grand, cultural sense, (2) Analysis and Synthesis used in the reconstitutional sense (e.g., where an analysis, followed by a synthesis, re-establishes the original condition), (3) Analysis and Synthesis used in the transformational sense (e.g., where the application of Analysis and Synthesis advances one to a qualitatively new level), and (4) Analysis and Synthesis used in the judgmental sense (as in the Kantian categories and their modern critiques). (1998, 111) { §5.5 }

The point of view of function is the central one for phenomenology; the investigations radiating from it comprise almost the whole phenomenological sphere, and in the end all phenomenological analyses somehow enter into its service as component parts or preliminary stages. In place of analysis and comparison, description and classification restricted to particular experiences [ Erlebnisse ], the particulars are considered from the “teleological” point of view of their function, to make possible “synthetic unity”. ( IPP , I, §86; Kersten’s tr. modified) { §5.8 }

Explication is penetration of the internal horizon of the object by the direction of perceptual interest. In the case of the unobstructed realization of this interest, the protentional expectations fulfill themselves in the same way; the object reveals itself in its properties as that which it was anticipated to be, except that what was anticipated now attains original givenness. A more precise determination results, eventually perhaps partial corrections, or—in the case of obstruction—disappointment of the expectations, and partial modalization. ( EJ , §22, 105) { §5.8 }

The process of explication in its originality is that in which an object given at first hand is brought to explicit intuition. The analysis of its structure must bring to light how a twofold constitution of sense [ Sinngebung ] is realized in it: “object as substrate” and “determination α ...”; it must show how this constitution of sense is realized in the form of a process which goes forward in separate steps, through which, however, extends continuously a unity of coincidence —a unity of coincidence of a special kind, belonging exclusively to these sense-forms. ( EJ , §24a, 114) { §5.8 }

§1. MATHEMATICS ARRIVES AT ALL ITS DEFINITIONS SYNTHETICALLY, WHEREAS PHILOSOPHY ARRIVES AT ITS DEFINITIONS ANALYTICALLY

There are two ways in which one can arrive at a general concept: either by the arbitrary combination of concepts, or by separating out that cognition which has been rendered distinct by means of analysis. Mathematics only ever draws up its definitions in the first way. For example, think arbitrarily of four straight lines bounding a plane surface so that the opposite sides are not parallel to each other. Let this figure be called a trapezium . The concept which I am defining is not given prior to the definition itself; on the contrary, it only comes into existence as a result of that definition. Whatever the concept of a cone may ordinarily signify, in mathematics, the concept is the product of the arbitrary representation of a right-angled triangle which is rotated on one of its sides. In this and in all other cases the definition obviously comes into being as a result of synthesis .

The situation is entirely different in the case of philosophical definitions. In philosophy, the concept of a thing is always given, albeit confusedly or in an insufficiently determinate fashion. The concept has to be analysed; the characteristic marks which have been separated out and the concept which has been given have to be compared with each other in all kinds of contexts; and this abstract thought must be rendered complete and determinate. For example, everyone has a concept of time. But suppose that that concept has to be defined. The idea of time has to be examined in all kinds of relation if its characteristic marks which have been abstracted have to be combined together to see whether they yield an adequate concept; they have to be collated with each other to see whether one characteristic mark does not partly include another within itself. If, in this case, I had tried to arrive at a definition of time synthetically, it would have had to have been a happy coincidence indeed if the concept, thus reached synthetically, had been exactly the same as that which completely expresses the idea of time which is given to us. ( IDP , 2:276-7/ TP , 248-9) { §4.5 }

The true method of metaphysics is basically the same as that introduced by Newton into natural science and which has been of such benefit to it. Newton’s method maintains that one ought, on the basis of certain experience and, if need be, with the help of geometry, to seek out the rules in accordance with which certain phenomena of nature occur. ( IDP , 2:286/ TP , 259) { §4.5 }

What I am chiefly concerned to establish is this: in metaphysics one must proceed analytically throughout, for the business of metaphysics is actually the analysis of confused cognitions. If this procedure is compared with the procedure which is adopted by philosophers and which is currently in vogue in all schools of philosophy, one will be struck by how mistaken the practice of philosophers is. With them, the most abstracted concepts, at which the understanding naturally arrives last of all, constitute their starting point, and the reason is that the method of the mathematicians, which they wish to imitate throughout, is firmly fixed in their minds. This is why there is a strange difference to be found between metaphysics and all other sciences. In geometry and in the other branches of mathematics, one starts with what is easier and then one slowly advances to the more difficult operations. In metaphysics, one starts with what is the most difficult: one starts with possibility, with existence in general, with necessity and contingency, and so on – all of them concepts which demand great abstraction and close attention. And the reason for this is to be sought chiefly in the fact that the signs for these concepts undergo numerous and imperceptible modifications in use; and the differences between them must not be overlooked. One is told that one ought to proceed synthetically throughout. Definitions are thus set up right at the beginning, and conclusions are confidently drawn from them. Those who practise philosophy in this vein congratulate each other for having learnt the secret of thorough thought from the geometers. What they do not notice at all is the fact that geometers acquire their concepts by means of synthesis , whereas philosophers can only acquire their concepts by means of analysis – and that completely changes the method of thought. ...

Metaphysics has a long way to go yet before it can proceed synthetically. It will only be when analysis has helped us towards concepts which are understood distinctly and in detail that it will be possible for synthesis to subsume compound cognitions under the simplest cognition, as happens in mathematics. ( IDP , 2:289-90/ TP , 262-3) { §4.5 }

Such a system of pure (speculative) reason I hope myself to deliver under the title Metaphysics of Nature , which will be not half so extensive but will be incomparably richer in content than this critique, which had first to display the sources and conditions of its possibility, and needed to clear and level a ground that was completely overgrown. Here I expect from my reader the patience and impartiality of a judge , but there I will expect the cooperative spirit and assistance of a fellow worker ; for however completely the principles of the system may be expounded in the critique, the comprehensiveness of the system itself requires also that no derivative concepts should be lacking, which, however, cannot be estimated a priori in one leap, but must be gradually sought out; likewise, just as in the former the whole synthesis of concepts has been exhausted, so in the latter it would be additionally demanded that the same thing should take place in respect of their analysis , which would be easy and more entertainment than labor. ( CPR , Axxi) { §4.5 }

I understand by an analytic of concepts not their analysis, or the usual procedure of philosophical investigations, that of analyzing [ zergliedern ] the content of concepts that present themselves and bringing them to distinctness, but rather the much less frequently attempted analysis [ Zergliederung ] of the faculty of understanding itself, in order to research the possibility of a priori concepts by seeking them only in the understanding as their birthplace and analyzing its pure use in general; for this is the proper business of a transcendental philosophy; the rest is the logical treatment of concepts in philosophy in general. We will therefore pursue the pure concepts into their first seeds and predispositions in the human understanding, where they lie ready, until with the opportunity of experience they are finally developed and exhibited in their clarity by the very same understanding, liberated from the empirical conditions attaching to them. ( CPR , A65-6/B90-1) { §4.5 }

[in offering a refutation of Mendelssohn’s proof of the persistence of the soul] If we take the above propositions in a synthetic connection, as valid for all thinking beings, as they must be taken in rational psychology as a system, and if from the category of relation, starting with the proposition “All thinking beings are, as such, substances” we go backward through the series of propositions until the circle closes, then we finally come up against the existence of thinking beings, which in this system are conscious of themselves not only as independent of external things but also as being able to determine themselves from themselves (in regard to the persistence belonging necessarily to the character of a substance). But from this it follows that idealism , at least problematic idealism, is unavoidable in that same rationalistic system, and if the existence of external things is not at all required for the determination of one’s own existence in time, then such things are only assumed, entirely gratuitously, without a proof of them being able to be given.

If, on the contrary, we follow the analytic procedure, grounded on the “I think” given as a proposition that already includes existence in itself, and hence grounded on modality, and then we take it apart so as to cognize its content, whether and how this I determines its existence in space or time merely through it, then the propositions of the rational doctrine of the soul begin not from the concept of a thinking being in general but from an actuality; and from the way this is thought, after everything empirical has been detached from it, it is concluded what pertains to a thinking being in general ... ( CPR , B416-19) { §4.5 }

Give a philosopher the concept of a triangle, and let him try to find out in his way how the sum of its angles might be related to a right angle. He has nothing but the concept of a figure enclosed by three straight lines, and in it the concept of equally many angles. Now he may reflect on this concept as long as he wants, yet he will never produce anything new. He can analyze [ zergliedern ] and make distinct the concept of a straight line, or of an angle, or of the number three, but he will not come upon any other properties that do not already lie in these concepts. But now let the geometer take up this question. He begins at once to construct a triangle. Since he knows that two right angles together are exactly equal to all of the adjacent angles that can be drawn at one point on a straight line, he extends one side of his triangle, and obtains two adjacent angles that together are equal to two right ones. Now he divides the external one of these angles by drawing a line parallel to the opposite side of the triangle, and sees that here there arises an external adjacent angle which is equal to an internal one, etc. In such a way, through a chain of inferences that is always guided by intuition, he arrives at a fully illuminating and at the same time general solution of the question. ( CPR , A716-7/B744-5) { §4.5 }

although a mere plan that might precede the Critique of Pure Reason would be unintelligible, undependable, and useless, it is by contrast all the more useful if it comes after. For one will thereby be put in the position to survey the whole, to test one by one the main points at issue in this science, and to arrange many things in the exposition better than could be done in the first execution of the work.

Here then is such a plan subsequent to the completed work, which now can be laid out according to the analytic method , whereas the work itself absolutely had to be composed according to the synthetic method , so that the science might present all of its articulations, as the structural organization of a quite peculiar faculty of cognition, in their natural connection. ( PFM , 4:263/ 13) { §4.5 }

In the Critique of Pure Reason I worked on this question [Is metaphysics possible at all?] synthetically , namely by inquiring within pure reason itself, and seeking to determine within this source both the elements and the laws of its pure use, according to principles. This work is difficult and requires a resolute reader to think himself little by little into a system that takes no foundation as given except reason itself, and that therefore tries to develop cognition out of its original seeds without relying on any fact whatever. Prolegomena should by contrast be preparatory exercises; they ought more to indicate what needs to be done in order to bring a science into existence if possible, than to present the science itself. They must therefore rely on something already known to be dependable, from which we can go forward with confidence and ascend to the sources, which are not yet known, and whose discovery not only will explain what is known already, but will also exhibit an area with many cognitions that all arise from these same sources. The methodological procedure of prolegomena, and especially of those that are to prepare for a future metaphysics, will therefore be analytic . ( PFM , 4:274-5/ 25-6) { §4.5 }

[interpreting the method of analysis in ancient Greek geometry] Rule of analysis and synthesis: Draw conclusions from your conjecture, one after the other, assuming that it is true. If you reach a false conclusion, then your conjecture was false. If you reach an indubitably true conclusion, your conjecture may have been true. In this case reverse the process, work backwards, and try to deduce your original conjecture via the inverse route from the indubitable truth to the dubitable conjecture. If you succeed, you have proved your conjecture. (1978a, 72-3) { §2.2 }

Synthesis is when, beginning from principles and running through truths in order, we discover certain progressions and form tables, as it were, or sometimes even general formulae, in which the answers to what arises later can be discovered. Analysis, however, goes back to principles solely for the sake of a given problem, just as if nothing had been discovered previously, by ourselves or by others. It is better to produce a synthesis, since that work is of permanent value, whereas when we begin an analysis on account of particular problems we often do what has been done before. However, to use a synthesis which has been established by others, and theorems which have already been discovered, is less of an art than to do everything by oneself by carrying out an analysis; especially as what has been discovered by others, or even by ourselves, does not always occur to us or come to hand. There are two kinds of analysis: one is the common type proceeding by leaps, which is used in algebra, and the other is a special kind which I call ‘reductive’. This is much more elegant, but is less well-known. In practice, analysis is more necessary, so that we may solve the problems which are presented to us; but the man who can indulge in theorising will be content to practice analysis just far enough to master the art. For the rest, he will rather practise synthesis, and will apply himself readily only to those questions to which order itself leads him. For in this way he will always progress pleasantly and easily, and will never feel any difficulties, nor be disappointed of success, and in a short time he will achieve much more than he would ever have hoped for at the outset. ( USA , 16-17) { §4.4 }

Primary truths are those which either state a term of itself, or deny an opposite of its opposite. For example, ‘A is A’, or ‘A is not not-A’ ...

All other truths are reduced to primary truths by the aid of definitions—i.e. by the analysis of notions; and this constitutes a priori proof , independent of experience. ...

The predicate or consequent, therefore, is always in the subject or antecedent, and this constitutes the nature of truth in general, or, the connexion between the terms of a proposition, as Aristotle also has observed. In identities this connexion and inclusion of the predicate in the subject is express, whereas in all other truths it is implicit and must be shown through the analysis of notions, in which a priori demonstration consists. ( PT , 87-8) { §4.4 }

There are two kinds of truths , those of reason and those of fact . Truths of reason are necessary and their opposite is impossible; truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come to those that are primitive. ( M , §33; tr. R. Latta) { §4.4 }

Our whole philosophy is rectification of colloquial linguistic usage. ( Aphorisms , 115) { §4.5 }

Writing is an excellent means of awakening in every man the system slumbering within him; and everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before. ( Ibid ., 119) { §4.5 }

Whichever way you look at it, philosophy is always analytical chemistry. The peasant employs all the propositions of the most abstract philosophy, only he employs them enveloped, concealed, compounded, latent, as the chemist and physicist says; the philosopher gives us the propositions pure. ( Ibid ., 162) { §4.5 }

There are therefore three ways whereby we get the complex Ideas of mixed Modes . 1. By Experience and Observation of things themselves. Thus by seeing two Men wrestle, or fence, we get the Idea of wrestling or fencing. 2. By Invention , or voluntary putting together of several simple Ideas in our own Minds: So he that first invented Printing, or Etching, had an Idea of it in his Mind, before it ever existed. 3. Which is the most usual way, by explaining the names of Actions we never saw, or Notions we cannot see; and by enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our Imaginations all those Ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts of them. For having by Sensation and Reflection stored our Minds with simple Ideas , and by use got the Names, that stand for them, we can by those Names represent to another any complex Idea , we would have him conceive; so that it has in it no simple Idea , but what he knows, and has, with us, the same name for. For all our complex Ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple Ideas , of which they are compounded, and originally made up, though perhaps their immediate Ingredients, as I may so say, are also complex Ideas . Thus the mixed Mode , which the word Lye stands for, is made of these simple Ideas : 1. Articulate Sounds. 2. Certain Ideas in the Mind of the Speaker. 3. Those words the signs of those Ideas . 4. Those signs put together by affirmation or negation, otherwise than the Ideas they stand for, are in the mind of the Speaker. I think I need not go any farther in the Analysis of that complex Idea , we call a Lye : What I have said is enough to shew, that it is made up of simple Ideas : And it could not be an offensive tediousness to my Reader, to trouble him with a more minute enumeration of every particular simple Idea , that goes to this complex one; which, from what has been said, he cannot but be able to make out to himself. The same may be done in all our complex Ideas whatsoever; which however compounded, and decompounded, may at last be resolved into simple Ideas , which are all the Materials of Knowledge or Thought we have or can have. ( Essay , II, xxii, 9) { §4.3 }

Analysis has a way of unravelling the self: the longer you pull on the thread, the more flaws you find. ( Therapy , London, 31)

The certainty of mathematics is based upon the general axiom that nothing can be and not be at the same time. In this science each proposition such as, for example, “A is B”, is proven in one of two ways. Either one unpacks the concepts of A and shows “A is B”, or one unpacks the concepts of B and infers from this that not-B must also be not-A. Both types of proof are thus based upon the principle of contradiction, and since the object of mathematics in general is magnitude and that of geometry in particular extension , one can say that in mathematics in general our concepts of magnitude are unpacked and analyzed, while in geometry in particular our concepts of extension are unpacked and analyzed. In fact, since geometry lays nothing else as its basis than the abstract concept of extension and derives all its conclusions from this single source – deriving them, to be sure, in such a way that one recognizes distinctly that everything maintained in it is necessarily connected by the principle of contradiction with the abstracted concept of extension, there is no doubt that all geometric truths that geometry teaches us to unpack or untangle from the concept of extension must be encountered all tangled up in it. For what else can the profoundest inferences do but analyze a concept and make distinct what was obscure? Such inferences cannot bring in what is not to be found in the concept, and it is easy to see that it is also not possible, by means of the principle of contradiction, to derive from the concept what is not to be found in it. In the concept of extension, for example, there lies the inner possibility that a space is limited by three straight lines in such a way that two of them include a right angle. For it follows from the essence of extension that it is capable of many sorts of limitations and that the assumed sort of limitation of one of its level planes contains no contradiction. If one subsequently shows that the concept of this assumed limitation or of a right-angled triangle necessarily entails that the square of the hypotenuse is such-and-such, then it must have also been possible to find this truth originally and implicitly in the initial concept of extension. Otherwise it could never have been derived from it by means of the principle of contradiction. The idea of extension is inseparable from the idea of the possibility of such a limitation, as was previously assumed, and the limitation is in turn necessarily connected to the concept of the equality of the aforesaid square. Thus, this truth also lay tangled up, as one might say, in the original concept of extension, but it escaped our attention and could not be distinctly known and distinguished until, through analysis, we unpacked all the parts of this concept and separated them from one another. The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the maginfying glass is for sight. It does not produce anything that was not to be found in the object. But it spreads out the parts of the object and makes it possible for our senses to distinguish much that they would otherwise not have noticed. The analysis of concepts does nothing different from this; it makes the parts and members of these concepts, which were previously obscure and unnoticed, distinct and recognizable, but it does not introduce anything into the concepts that was not already to be found in them. (1763, §1/ PW , 257-8) { §4.5 }

It seems necessary, then, to regard the world as formed of concepts. These are the only objects of knowledge. They cannot be regarded fundamentally as abstractions either from things or from ideas; since both alike can, if anything is to be true of them, be composed of nothing but concepts. A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts. ( NJ , 8) { §6.4 }

It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. I do not know how far this source of error would be done away, if philosophers would try to discover what question they were asking, before they set about to answer it; for the work of analysis and distinction is often very difficult: we may often fail to make the necessary discovery, even though we make a definite attempt to do so. But I am inclined to think that in many cases a resolute attempt would be sufficient to ensure success; so that, if only this attempt were made, many of the most glaring difficulties and disagreements in philosophy would disappear. ( PE , vii) { §6.4 }

My point is that ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to any one who does not already know it, what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is. Definitions of the kind that I was asking for, definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when the object or notion in question is something complex. You can give a definition of a horse, because a horse has many different properties and qualities, all of which you can enumerate. But when you have enumerated them all, when you have reduced a horse to his simplest terms, then you no longer define those terms. They are simply something which you think of or perceive, and to any one who cannot think of or perceive them, you can never, by any definition, make their nature known. ( PE , 7) { §6.4 }

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phænomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations. ( Opticks , Book Three, Part I, 404-5) { §4.1 }

All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically telescoped elude definition. ( On the Genealogy of Morals , 1887, tr. Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1968, 80)

the most valuable insights are methods . ( The Antichrist , 1895, §13)

The so-called Treasury of Analysis [ analuomenos ] .. is, in short, a special body of doctrines furnished for the use of those who, after going through the usual elements, wish to obtain the power of solving theoretical problems, which are set to them, and for this purpose only is it useful. It is the work of three men, Euclid the author of the Elements , Apollonius of Perga, and Aristaeus the Elder, and proceeds by the method of analysis and synthesis.

Now analysis is the way from what is sought—as if it were admitted—through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order to something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis we suppose that which is sought to be already done, and we inquire from what it results, and again what is the antecedent [ proêgoumenon ] of the latter, until we on our backward way light upon something already known and being first in order. And we call such a method analysis, as being a solution backwards [ anapalin lysin ].

In synthesis, on the other hand, we suppose that which was reached last in analysis to be already done, and arranging in their natural order as consequents [ epomena ] the former antecedents [ proêgoumena ] and linking them one with another, we in the end arrive at the construction of the thing sought. And this we call synthesis.

Now analysis is of two kinds. One seeks the truth, being called theoretical. The other serves to carry out what was desired to do, and this is called problematical. In the theoretical kind we suppose the thing sought as being and as being true, and then we pass through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order, as though they were true and existent by hypothesis, to something admitted; then, if that which is admitted be true, the thing sought is true, too, and the proof will be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon something false to admit, the thing sought will be false, too. In the problematic kind we suppose the desired thing to be known, and then we pass through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order, as though they were true, up to something admitted. If the thing admitted is possible or can be done, that is, if it is what the mathematicians call given, the desired thing will also be possible. The proof will again be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon something impossible to admit, the problem will also be impossible. ( PAC , tr. in Hintikka and Remes 1974, 8-10) { §2.2 }

For we should remember that if a person goes on analyzing names into words, and inquiring also into the elements out of which the words are formed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has to answer him must at last give up the inquiry in despair … But if we take a word which is incapable of further resolution, then we shall be right in saying that we at last reached a primary element, which need not be resolved any further. (‘Cratylus’, Benjamin Jowett (trans.), in Hamilton and Cairns (ed.), Collected Dialogues , New York: Pantheon Books, 421e)

Then, said I, is not dialectic the only process of inquiry that advances in this manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in order to find confirmation there? And it is literally true that when the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic Myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leads it up, employing as helpers and cooperators in this conversation the studies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciences often from habit, though they really need some other designation, connoting more clearness than opinion and more obscurity than science. ‘Understanding’ I believe was the term we employed. But, I presume we shall not dispute about the name when things of such moment lie before us for consideration. (‘Republic VII’, Paul Shorey (trans.), Ibid. , 533d)

Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which the reason lays hold of by the power of dialectic, treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas. (‘Republic VI’, Paul Shorey (trans.), Ibid ., 511b)

In mathematics logic is called analysis , and analysis means division , dissection . It can have, therefore, no tool other than the scalpel and the microscope. (‘Intuition and Logic in Mathematics’, 1900, in William Ewald, ed., From Kant to Hilbert , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 1018)

Nonmathematical illustration [of the method of analysis described by Pappus] . A primitive man wishes to cross a creek; but he cannot do so in the usual way because the water has risen overnight. Thus, the crossing becomes the object of a problem; “crossing the creek’ is the x of this primitive problem. The man may recall that he has crossed some other creek by walking along a fallen tree. He looks around for a suitable fallen tree which becomes his new unknown, his y . He cannot find any suitable tree but there are plenty of trees standing along he creek; he wishes that one of them would fall. Could he make a tree fall across the creek? There is a great idea and there is a new unknown; by what means could he tilt the tree over the creek?

This train of ideas ought to be called analysis if we accept the terminology of Pappus. If the primitive man succeeds in finishing his analysis he may become the inventor of the bridge and of the axe. What will be the synthesis? Translation of ideas into actions. The finishing act of the synthesis is walking along a tree across the creek.

The same objects fill the analysis and the synthesis; they exercise the mind of the man in the analysis and his muscles in the synthesis; the analysis consists in thoughts, the synthesis in acts. There is another difference; the order is reversed. Walking across the creek is the first desire from which the analysis starts and it is the last act with which the synthesis ends. (1957, 145) { §2.2 }

beauty and order are common to all branches of mathematics, as are the method of proceeding from things better known to things we seek to know and the reverse path from the latter to the former, the methods called analysis and synthesis. ( CEE , 8/6-7) { §2.2 }

as Nous is set over understanding and dispenses principles to it from above, perfecting it out of its own riches, so in the same way dialectic, the purest part of philosophy, hovers attentively over mathematics, encompasses its whole development, and of itself contributes to the special sciences their various perfecting, critical, and intellective powers—the procedures, I mean, of analysis, division, definition, and demonstration. Being thus endowed and led towards perfection, mathematics reaches some of its results by analysis, others by synthesis, expounds some matters by division, others by definition, and some of its discoveries binds fast by demonstration, adapting these methods to its subjects and employing each of them for gaining insight into mediating ideas. Thus its analyses are under the control of dialectic, and its definitions, divisions, and demonstrations are of the same family and unfold in conformity with the way of mathematical understanding. It is reasonable, then, to say that dialectic is the capstone of the mathematical sciences. It brings to perfection all the intellectual insight they contain, making what is exact in them more irrefutable, confirming the stability of what they have established and referring what is pure and incorporeal in them to the simplicity and immateriality of Nous, making precise their primary starting-points through definitions and explicating the distinctions of genera and species within their subject-matters, teaching the use of synthesis to bring out the consequences that follow from principles and of analysis to lead up to the first principles and starting-points. ( CEE , 42-3/35-6) { §2.2 }

Magnitudes, figures and their boundaries, and the ratios that are found in them, as well as their properties, their various positions and motions—these are what geometry studies, proceeding from the partless point down to solid bodies, whose many species and differences it explores, then following the reverse path from the more complex objects to the simpler ones and their principles. It makes use of synthesis and analysis, always starting from hypotheses and first principles that it obtains from the science above it and employing all the procedures of dialectic—definition and division for establishing first principles and articulating species and genera, and demonstrations and analyses in dealing with the consequences that follow from first principles, in order to show the more complex matters both as proceeding from the simpler and also conversely as leading back to them. ( CEE , 57/46) { §2.2 }

[Euclid’s Elements ] contains all the dialectical methods: the method of division for finding kinds, definitions for making statements of essential properties, demonstrations for proceeding from premises to conclusions, and analysis for passing in the reverse direction from conclusions to principles. ( CEE , 69/57) { §2.2 }

there are certain methods that have been handed down, the best being the method of analysis, which traces the desired result back to an acknowledged principle. Plato, it is said, taught this method to Leodamas, who also is reported to have made many discoveries in geometry by means of it. A second is the method of diaeresis , which divides into its natural parts the genus proposed for examination and which affords a starting-point for demonstration by eliminating the parts irrelevant for the establishment of what is proposed. This method also Plato praised as an aid in all the sciences. A third is the reduction to impossibility, which does not directly show the thing itself that is wanted but by refuting its contradictory indirectly establishes its truth. ( CEE , 211-12/165-6) { §2.2 }

for problems one common procedure, the method of analysis, has been discovered, and by following it we can reach a solution; for thus it is that even the most obscure problems are pursued. ( CEE , 242/189) { §2.2 }

In general we must understand that all mathematical arguments proceed either from or to the starting-points, as Porphyry somewhere says. Those that proceed from the starting-points are themselves of two kinds, as it happens, for they proceed either from common notions, that is, from self-evident clarity alone, or from things previously demonstrated. Those that proceed to the starting-points are either affirmative of them or destructive. But those that affirm first principles are called “analyses”, and their reverse procedures “syntheses” (for it is possible from those principles to proceed in orderly fashion to the thing sought, and this is called “synthesis”); when they are destructive, they are called “reductions to impossibility”, for it is the function of this procedure to show that something generally accepted and self-evident is overthrown. There is a kind of syllogism in it, though not the same as in analysis ... ( CEE , 255/198-9) { §2.2 }

A maxim of shallow analysis prevails: expose no more logical structure than seems useful for the deduction or other inquiry at hand. In the immortal words of Adolf Meyer, where it doesn’t itch don't scratch.

On occasion the useful degree of analysis may, conversely, be such as to cut into a simple word of ordinary language, requiring its paraphrase into a composite term in which other terms are compounded with the help of canonical notation. When this happens, the line of analysis adopted will itself commonly depend on what is sought in the inquiry at hand; again there need be no question of the uniquely right analysis, nor of synonymy. (1960, §33, 160-1) { §6.9 }

This construction [of the ordered pair as a class, such as Wiener’s identification of the ordered pair x , y > with the class {{ x }, { y , Λ}}] is paradigmatic of what we are most typically up to when in a philosophical spirit we offer an “analysis” or “explication” of some hitherto inadequately formulated “idea” or expression. We do not claim synonymy. We do not claim to make clear and explicit what the users of the unclear expression had unconsciously in mind all along. We do not expose hidden meanings, as the words ‘analysis’ or ‘explication’ would suggest; we supply lacks. We fix on the particular functions of the unclear expression that make it worth troubling about, and then devise a substitute, clear and couched in terms to our liking, that fills those functions. Beyond those conditions of partial agreement, dictated by our interests and purposes, any traits of the explicans come under the head of “don’t-cares” … Under this head we are free to allow the explicans all manner of novel connotations never associated with the explicandum. …

Philosophical analysis, explication, has not always been seen in this way. Only the reading of a synonymy claim into analysis could engender the so-called paradox of analysis, which runs thus: how can a correct analysis be informative, since to understand it we must already know the meanings of its terms, and hence already know that the terms which it equates are synonymous? The notion that analysis must consist somehow in the uncovering of hidden meanings underlies also the recent tendency of some of the Oxford philosophers to take as their business an examination of the subtle irregularities of ordinary language. And there is no mistaking the obliviousness of various writers to the point about the don’t-cares. …

... explication is elimination . We have, to begin with, an expression or form of expression that is somehow troublesome. It behaves partly like a term but not enough so, or it is vague in ways that bother us, or it puts kinks in a theory or encourages one or another confusion. But also it serves certain purposes that are not to be abandoned. Then we find a way of accomplishing those same purposes through other channels, using other and less troublesome forms of expression. The old perplexities are resolved.

According to an influential doctrine of Wittgenstein’s, the task of philosophy is not to solve problems but to dissolve them by showing that there were really none there. This doctrine has its limitations, but it aptly fits explication. For when explication banishes a problem it does so by showing it to be in an important sense unreal; viz., in the sense of proceeding only from needless usages. (1960, §53, 258-60) { §6.9 }

This brings us to the second of the five turning points, the shift from terms to sentences. The medievals had the notion of syncategorematic words, but it was a contemporary of John Horne Tooke who developed it into an explicit theory of contextual definition; namely, Jeremy Bentham. He applied contextual definition not just to grammatical particles and the like, but even to some genuine terms, categorematic ones. If he found some term convenient but ontologically embarrassing, contextual definition enabled him in some cases to continue to enjoy the services of the term while disclaiming its denotation. He could declare the term syncategorematic, despite grammatical appearances, and then could justify his continued use of it if he could show systematically how to paraphrase as wholes all sentences in which he chose to imbed it. Such was his theory of fictions: what he called paraphrasis, and what we now call contextual definition. The term, like the grammatical particles, is meaningful as a part of meaningful wholes. If every sentence in which we use a term can be paraphrased into a sentence that makes good sense, no more can be asked. (1975, 68-9) { §5.6 }

The issue is: is there such an activity as “conceptual analysis” or can philosophers do no more than describe usage and, perhaps, make recommendations for change in usage? One’s answer to this question will determine whether one thinks that Wittgenstein was wrong to give up on the idea of a systematic theory of meaning, and Quine right to suggest that the very notion of “meaning” was a hangover of Aristotelean essentialism. If they were right, it is hard to hang on to the idea that “conceptual clarity” is a goal of philosophical inquiry … Metaphilosophical issues hover in the wings of the debates over whether the content of an assertion varies from utterer to utterer and from audience to audience. If it does not, if something remains invariable – the concepts expressed by the words that make up the sentence – then perhaps there really are entities with intrinsic properties which philosophical analysis can hope to pin down. But, if content does vary in this way, then concepts are like persons - never quite the same twice, always developing, always maturing. You can change a concept by changing usage, but you cannot get a concept right, once and for all. (‘Analytic and Conversational Philosophy’, Philosophy as Cultural Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 122-3)

Analysis, to be sure, is articulation rather than dissolution. (1980, 8) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

we must see where we are going , or what will “count” as the successful resolution to the given exercise of analysis. … Analysis is the admittedly indispensable road to our destination, but it is no more the destination than it is the intention to begin the voyage. One could perhaps say that the destination is an articulated structure. But we know that we have reached the destination only when we recognize a given articulation as the explanation of that structure. We cannot see that an analysis explains a structure by performing an additional step in the analysis. At some point we must see that we are finished. And to see an analysis is not to analyze. It is rather to see an articulated structure as a unity, whole, or synthesis. ( Ibid ., 9) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

If to understand is to possess an explanation, and if an explanation is an analysis, it remains the case that an analysis is intelligible because it is also a synthesis. Explanation may be called “recollection” in the Platonic sense because it is the process of retracing, by the method of counting and measuring, the joints of an internally articulated unity, one prefigured within the initial formulation of the entire analytical exercise. In slightly more prosaic terms, analysis is never merely the application of rules. It is also at once a seeing of which rules to apply and how to apply them. This is what it means to say that analysis is also synthesis. And this is why it is false to say, as is at least implied by so much contemporary analytical philosophy, that we begin with intuitions and then replace them with ever more sophisticated analyses. Not only is it false to say this, but strictly speaking, it is meaningless. If “to mean” is “to provide an analysis”, there is no analysis of analysis without ingredient intuition. Without intuition, there is at each stage nothing to analyze. Intuition (of syntheses or unities) without analysis is mute, but analysis without intuition is inarticulate as well as blind: the sounds it utters cannot be distinguished from noise. ( Ibid ., 9-10) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

analysis is a cognitive activity and it cannot be coherently understood except by recourse to intuition. There is a non-discursive context of analysis . ( Ibid ., 27) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

conceptual analysis is rooted in intuitions which cannot be replaced by the process of analysis but which regulate that process. ( Ibid ., 48) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

That all sound philosophy should begin with an analysis of propositions, is a truth too evident, perhaps, to demand a proof. That Leibniz’s philosophy began with such an analysis, is less evident, but seems to be no less true. ( PL , 8) { §6.3 }

It is necessary to realize that definition, in mathematics, does not mean, as in philosophy, an analysis of the idea to be defined into constituent ideas. This notion, in any case, is only applicable to concepts, whereas in mathematics it is possible to define terms which are not concepts. Thus also many notions are defined by symbolic logic which are not capable of philosophical definition, since they are simple and unanalyzable. ( POM , ch. 2, §31, 27) { §6.3 }

For the comprehension of analysis, it is necessary to investigate the notion of whole and part, a notion which has been wrapped in obscurity—though not without certain more or less valid logical reasons—by the writers who may be roughly called Hegelian. ( POM , ch. 16, §133, 137) { §6.3 }

I have already touched on a very important logical doctrine, which the theory of whole and part brings into prominence—I mean the doctrine that analysis is falsification. Whatever can be analyzed is a whole, and we have already seen that analysis of wholes is in some measure falsification. But it is important to realize the very narrow limits of this doctrine. We cannot conclude that the parts of a whole are not really its parts, nor that the parts are not presupposed in the whole in a sense in which the whole is not presupposed in the parts, nor yet that the logically prior is not usually simpler than the logically subsequent. In short, though analysis gives us the truth, and nothing but the truth, yet it can never give us the whole truth. This is the only sense in which the doctrine is to be accepted. In any wider sense, it becomes merely a cloak for laziness, by giving an excuse to those who dislike the labour of analysis. ( POM , ch. 16, §138, 141) { §6.3 }

We are sometimes told that things are organic unities, composed of many parts expressing the whole and expressed in the whole. This notion is apt to replace the older notion of substance, not, I think, to the advantage of precise thinking. The only kind of unity to which I can attach any precise sense—apart from the unity of the absolutely simple—is that of a whole composed of parts. But this form of unity cannot be what is called organic; for if the parts express the whole or the other parts, they must be complex, and therefore themselves contain parts; if the parts have been analyzed as far as possible, they must be simple terms, incapable of expressing anything except themselves. A distinction is made, in support of organic unities, between conceptual analysis and real division into parts. What is really indivisible, we are told, may be conceptually analyzable. This distinction, if the conceptual analysis be regarded as subjective, seems to me wholly inadmissible. All complexity is conceptual in the sense that it is due to a whole capable of logical analysis, but is real in the sense that it has no dependence upon the mind, but only upon the nature of the object. Where the mind can distinguish elements, there must be different elements to distinguish; though, alas! there are often different elements which the mind does not distinguish. The analysis of a finite space into points is no more objective than the analysis (say) of causality into time-sequence + ground and consequent, or of equality into sameness of relation to a given magnitude. In every case of analysis, there is a whole consisting of parts with relations; it is only the nature of the parts and the relations which distinguishes different cases. Thus the notion of an organic whole in the above sense must be attributed to defective analysis, and cannot be used to explain things.

It is also said that analysis is falsification, that the complex is not equivalent to the sum of its constituents and is changed when analyzed into these. In this doctrine, as we saw in Parts I and II, there is a measure of truth, when what is to be analyzed is a unity. A proposition has a certain indefinable unity, in virtue of which it is an assertion; and this is so completely lost by analysis that no enumeration of constituents will restore it, even though itself be mentioned as a constituent. There is, it must be confessed, a grave logical difficulty in this fact, for it is difficult not to believe that a whole must be constituted by its constituents. For us, however, it is sufficient to observe that all unities are propositions or propositional concepts, and that consequently nothing that exists is a unity. If, therefore, it is maintained that things are unities, we must reply that no things exist. ( POM , ch. 53, §439, 466-7) { §6.3 }

What we want to be clear about is the twofold method of analysis of a proposition, i.e. , first taking the proposition as it stands and analyzing it, second taking the proposition as a special case of a type of propositions. Whenever we use variables, we are already necessarily concerned with a type of propositions. E.g. “ p ⊃ q ” stands for any proposition of a certain type. When values are assigned to p and q , we reach a particular proposition by a different road from that which would have started with those values plus implication, and have so built up the particular proposition without reference to a type. This is how functions come in. (‘Fundamental Notions’, 1904, in 1994, 118) { §6.3 }

We ought to say, I think, that there are different ways of analysing complexes, and that one way of analysis is into function and argument, which is the same as type and instance. ( Ibid ., 256) { §6.3 }

The fundamental epistemological principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ( KAKD , 159) { §6.3 }

when we say ‘the author of Waverley was Scott’ we mean ‘one and only one man wrote Waverley, and he was Scott’. Here the identity is between a variable, i.e. an indeterminate subject (‘he’), and Scott; ‘the author of Waverley’ has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a constituent of the proposition. ( KAKD , 165) { §6.3 }

Analysis may be defined as the discovery of the constituents and the manner of combination of a given complex. The complex is to be one with which we are acquainted; the analysis is complete when we become acquainted with all the constituents and with their manner of combination, and know that there are no more constituents and that that is their manner of combination. We may distinguish formal analysis as the discovery of the manner of combination, and material analysis as the discovery of the constituents. Material analysis may be called descriptive when the constituents are only known by description, not by acquaintance. ( TK , 119) { §6.3 }

Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used. The study of logic consists, broadly speaking, of two not very sharply distinguished portions. On the one hand it is concerned with those general statements which can be made concerning everything without mentioning any one thing or predicate or relation, such for example as ‘if x is a member of the class α and every member of α is a member of β , then x is a member of the class β , whatever x , α , and β may be.’. On the other hand, it is concerned with the analysis and enumeration of logical forms , i.e. with the kinds of propositions that may occur, with the various types of facts, and with the classification of the constituents of facts. In this way logic provides an inventory of possibilities, a repertory of abstractly tenable hypotheses. ( SMP , 84-5) { §6.3 }

The essence of philosophy as thus conceived is analysis, not synthesis. To build up systems of the world, like Heine’s German professor who knit together fragments of life and made an intelligible system out of them, is not, I believe, any more feasible than the discovery of the philosopher’s stone. What is feasible is the understanding of general forms, and the division of traditional problems into a number of separate and less baffling questions. ‘Divide and conquer’ is the maxim of success here as elsewhere. ( SMP , 86) { §6.3 }

Kant, under the influence of Newton, adopted, though with some vacillation, the hypothesis of absolute space, and this hypothesis, though logically unobjectionable, is removed by Occam’s razor, since absolute space is an unnecessary entity in the explanation of the physical world. Although, therefore, we cannot refute the Kantian theory of an a priori intuition, we can remove its grounds one by one through an analysis of the problem. Thus, here as in many other philosophical questions, the analytic method, while not capable of arriving at a demonstrative result, is nevertheless capable of showing that all the positive grounds in favour of a certain theory are fallacious and that a less unnatural theory is capable of accounting for the facts.

Another question by which the capacity of the analytic method can be shown is the question of realism. Both those who advocate and those who combat realism seem to me to be far from clear as to the nature of the problem which they are discussing. If we ask: ‘Are our objects of perception real and are they independent of the percipient?’ it must be supposed that we attach some meaning to the words ‘real’ and ‘independent’, and yet, if either side in the controversy of realism is asked to define these two words, their answer is pretty sure to embody confusions such as logical analysis will reveal. ( SMP , 90-1) { §6.3 }

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing is this:

Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

Some examples of the substitution of construction for inference in the realm of mathematical philosophy may serve to elucidate the uses of this maxim. Take first the case of irrationals. In old days, irrationals were inferred as the supposed limits of series of rationals which had no rational limit; but the objection to this procedure was that it left the existence of irrationals merely optative, and for this reason the stricter methods of the present day no longer tolerate such a definition. We now define an irrational number as a certain class of ratios, thus constructing it logically by means of ratios, instead of arriving at it by a doubtful inference from them. Take again the case of cardinal numbers. Two equally numerous collections appear to have something in common: this something is supposed to be their cardinal number. But so long as the cardinal number is inferred from the collections, not constructed in terms of them, its existence must remain in doubt, unless in virtue of a metaphysical postulate ad hoc . By defining the cardinal number of a given collection as the class of all equally numerous collections, we avoid the necessity of this metaphysical postulate, and thereby remove a needless element of doubt from the philosophy of arithmetic. A similar method, as I have shown elsewhere, can be applied to classes themselves, which need not be supposed to have any metaphysical reality, but can be regarded as symbolically constructed fictions.

The method by which the construction proceeds is closely analogous in these and all similar cases. Given a set of propositions nominally dealing with the supposed inferred entities, we observe the properties which are required of the supposed entities in order to make these propositions true. By dint of a little logical ingenuity, we then construct some logical function of less hypothetical entities which has the requisite properties. The constructed function we substitute for the supposed inferred entities, and thereby obtain a new and less doubtful interpretation of the body of propositions in question. This method, so fruitful in the philosophy of mathematics, will be found equally applicable in the philosophy of physics, where, I do not doubt, it would have been applied long ago but for the fact that all who have studied this subject hitherto have been completely ignorant of mathematical logic. I myself cannot claim originality in the application of this method to physics, since I owe the suggestion and the stimulus for its application entirely to my friend and collaborator Dr Whitehead, who is engaged in applying it to the more mathematical portions of the region intermediate between sense-data and the points, instants and particles of physics.

A complete application of the method which substitutes constructions for inferences would exhibit matter wholly in terms of sense-data, and even, we may add, of the sense-data of a single person, since the sense-data of others cannot be known without some element of inference. This, however, must remain for the present an ideal, to be approached as nearly as possible, but to be reached, if at all, only after a long preliminary labour of which as yet we can only see the very beginning. ( RSDP , 115-6) { §6.3 }

In the special sciences, when they have become fully developed, the movement is forward and synthetic, from the simpler to the more complex. But in philosophy we follow the inverse direction: from the complex and relatively concrete we proceed towards the simple and abstract by means of analysis, seeking, in the process, to eliminate the particularity of the original subject-matter, and to confine our attention entirely to the logical form of the facts concerned. ( OKEW , 189-90) { §6.3 }

The nature of philosophic analysis … can now be stated in general terms. We start from a body of common knowledge, which constitutes our data. On examination, the data are found to be complex, rather vague, and largely interdependent logically. By analysis we reduce them to propositions which are as nearly as possible simple and precise, and we arrange them in deductive chains, in which a certain number of initial propositions form a logical guarantee for all the rest. ( OKEW , 214) { §6.3 }

the chief thesis that I have to maintain is the legitimacy of analysis. ( PLA , 189) { §6.3 }

it is very important to distinguish between a definition and an analysis. All analysis is only possible in regard to what is complex, and it always depends, in the last analysis, upon direct acquaintance with the objects which are the meanings of certain simple symbols. It is hardly necessary to observe that one does not define a thing but a symbol. ( PLA , 194) { §6.3 }

Analysis is not the same thing as definition. You can define a term by means of a correct description, but that does not constitute an analysis. ( PLA , 196) { §6.3 }

The business of philosophy, as I conceive it, is essentially that of logical analysis, followed by logical synthesis. ( LA , 341) { §6.3 }

Ever since I abandoned the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, I have sought solutions of philosophical problems by means of analysis; and I remain firmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary, that only by analysing is progress possible. ( MPD , 11) { §6.3 }

Philosophy must then involve the exercise of systematic restatement. But this does not mean that it is a department of philology or literary criticism.

Its restatement is not the substitution of one noun for another or one verb for another. That is what lexicographers and translators excel in. Its restatements are transmutations of syntax, and transmutations of syntax controlled not be desire for elegance or stylistic correctness but by desire to exhibit the forms of the facts into which philosophy is the enquiry.

I conclude, then, that there is, after all, a sense in which we can properly enquire and even say “what it really means to say so and so”. For we can ask what is the real form of the fact recorded when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited by the expression in question. And we can often succeed in stating this fact in a new form of words which does exhibit what the other failed to exhibit. And I am for the present inclined to believe that this is what philosophical analysis is, and that this is the sole and whole function of philosophy. (1932, 100) { §6.8 }

I have no special objection to or any special liking for the fashion of describing as ‘analysis’ the sort or sorts of conceptual examination which constitute philosophizing. But the idea is totally false that this examination is a sort of garage inspection of one conceptual vehicle at a time. On the contrary, to put it dogmatically, it is always a traffic inspector’s examination of a conceptual traffic-block, involving at least two streams of vehicles hailing from the theories, or points of view or platitudes which are at cross-purposes with one another. (1953, 32) { §6.8 }

It is certain that when I wrote “Systematically Misleading Expressions” I was still under the direct influence of the notion of an “ideal language”—a doctrine according to which there were a certain number of logical forms which one could somehow dig up by scratching away at the earth which covered them. I no longer think, especially not today, that this is a good method. I do not regret having traveled that road, but I am happy to have left it behind me. (In Rorty 1967, 305) { §6.8 }

alas! intellect must first destroy the object of Inner Sense if it would make it its own. Like the analytical chemist, the philosopher can only discover how things are combined by analysing them, only lay bare the workings of spontaneous Nature by subjecting them to the torment of his own techniques. In order to lay hold of the fleeting phenomenon, he must first bind it in the fetters of rule, tear its fair body to pieces by reducing it to concepts, and preserve its living spirit in a sorry skeleton of words. Is it any wonder that natural feeling cannot find itself again in such an image, or that in the account of the analytical thinker truth should appear as paradox? ( AE , I, 4) { §5.2 }

analysis without synopsis must be blind. (‘Time and the World Order’, in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell, (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science III , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962, 527)

[in discussing Ryle 1953 { Quotation }] Personally, I have no axe to grind about what it takes to analyze a concept. Very likely, there are different sorts of cases. It may well be that sometimes what we want from an analysis is the tracing of the sort of intricate web of conceptual relations in which Ryle delights. But there is little reason for thinking that this is always so—at least, if analysis is construed as whatever it is that philosophers do to solve their problems. What strikes me as worrisome is Ryle’ tendency to use the web metaphor as a rationale for rejecting the old, Russellian conception of analysis, with its emphasis on precisely formulated logical forms, and replacing it with methodology which, in some cases, may degenerate into a recipe for generating a conceptual fog. It is all well and good to recognize that sometimes the concepts philosophers deal with will be vague, imprecise, and open-ended, with close conceptual connections to other concepts of the same sort. We do have to be able to deal with such cases—perhaps along the lines Ryle suggests. What is not good is a prior ideological commitment to blurred edges, indirectness, and an unwillingness to separate tangential from central issues. Sometimes Ryle and other ordinary language philosophers seem to go too far in this direction; substituting one confining orthodoxy about analysis for another. When this happens, central philosophical points get missed ... (2003, II, 80-1) { §6.1 }

Philosophical analysis is a term of art. At different times in the twentieth century, different authors have used it to mean different things. What is to be analyzed (e.g., words and sentences versus concepts and propositions), what counts as a successful analysis, and what philosophical fruits come from analysis are questions that have been vigorously debated since the dawn of analysis as a self-conscious philosophical approach. Often, different views of analysis have been linked to different views of the nature of philosophy, the sources of philosophical knowledge, the role of language in thought, the relationship between language and the world, and the nature of meaning—as well to more focused questions about necessary and apriori truth. Indeed the variety of positions is so great as to make any attempt to extract a common denominator from the multiplicity of views sterile and not illuminating.

Nevertheless analytic philosophy—with its emphasis on what is called “philosophical analysis”—is a clear and recognizable tradition. Although the common core of doctrine uniting its practitioners scarcely exceeds the platitudinous, a pattern of historical influence is not hard to discern. The tradition begins with G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as well as Gottlob Frege, whose initial influence was largely filtered through Russell and Wittgenstein). These philosophers set the agenda, first, for logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel, and A.J. Ayer and then later for Wittgenstein, who in turn ushered in the ordinary language school led by Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin. More recently the second half of the twentieth century has seen a revival of Russellian and Carnapian themes in the work of W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy, with its changing views of philosophical analysis, is a trail of influence ... (2005, 144) { §6.1 }

In my opinion Logical Positivism fails in its treatment of analysis. Wittgenstein and the other Logical Positivists talk much about analysis, but they do not consider the various kinds of analysis, nor do they show in what sense philosophy is the analysis of facts. They make use of analytic definition of a symbolic expression, and of the analytic clarification of a concept, but they do not distinguish between them. They also employ postulational analysis. But they do not seem to understand directional analysis, and, accordingly, they fail to apprehend the need for it. In this way they depart, in my opinion, from the practice of Moore. Not only is their conception of analysis defective, but, further, their conception of the kinds of facts to be analysed is inadequate. They treat all facts as linguistic facts . Hence, they suppose that the first problem of philosophy is to determine the principles of symbolism, and from these principles to draw limits with regard to what we can think. This assumption has two important consequences. First, it leads to the view that philosophy is ‘the activity of finding meaning’, to quote Schlick’s statement. The second consequence is that they are apt to place too much reliance upon the construction of postulational systems. (1933b, 82-3) { §6.6 }

Strawson, Peter F.

An analysis, I suppose, may be thought of as a kind of breaking down or decomposing of something. So we have the picture of a kind of intellectual taking to pieces of ideas or concepts; the discovering of what elements a concept or idea is composed and how they are related. Is this the right picture or the wrong one—or is it partly right and partly wrong? That is a question which calls for a considered response … ( Analysis and Metaphysics , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 2)

If we took this notion [of analysis as decomposition] completely seriously for the case of conceptual analysis—analysis of ideas—we should conclude that our task was to find ideas that were completely simple, that were free from internal conceptual complexity; and then to demonstrate how the more or less complex ideas that are of interest to philosophers could be assembled by a kind of logical or conceptual construction out of these simple elements. The aim would be to get a clear grasp of complex meanings by reducing them, without remainder, to simple meanings. Thus baldly stated, this may seem a rather implausible project. And so it is. Nevertheless it, or some close relation of it, has been, and is, taken seriously. Even when not taken to the lengths I have just described, it continues to exercise a certain influence on the philosophical mind. ( Ibid. 18)

Among the philosophers who were most influential in England in the period between the two world wars were the analysts. Their analytic theories were sometimes associated with the metaphysical view which Russell called logical atomism, sometimes with the supposedly anti-metaphysical doctrines of logical positivism, and sometimes, as in the case of G. E. Moore, the analytic practice had no clearly defined dogmatic background at all. But they were united at least in the view that analysis was at least one of the most important tasks of the philosopher; and by analysis they meant something which, whatever precise description of it they chose, at least involved the attempt to rewrite in different and in some way more appropriate terms those statements which they found philosophically puzzling. (1956, vii) { §6.1 }

analysis is a familiar philosophical method. I shall not attempt to offer you a complete historical account of analytic philosophy. Even the minute examination of a particular analytic philosopher, or group of analytic philosophers, would not be of great interest. I propose rather to sketch, in broad strokes, four major forms of philosophical analysis which I think important to distinguish carefully from one another. I shall call the first of these: classical analysis. It corresponds, roughly, to the traditional method of analysis used by English philosophers, a method which Russell did so much to develop. I shall then examine three other, more recent forms of philosophical analysis: (1) the type of analysis which involves the construction of artificial languages; (2) the type of analysis practiced by Wittgenstein in his later period; (3) the type of analysis which characterizes present-day Oxford Philosophy.

The fundamental notion of classical analysis is that propositions couched in ordinary language are correct, in the sense that they are not objectionable in principle. They are neither logically nor metaphysically absurd. On the other hand, insofar as the form of these propositions of ordinary language hides their true meaning, they are neither metaphysically nor logically satisfactory. The task of the analyst is, therefore, to reformulate them so that this meaning will be clearly and explicitly presented, rather then to reject them. To analyze, is to reformulate,—to translate into a better wording. (1962, 294-5) { §6.1 }

The logical positivism of the Vienna Circle did not modify the methodology of classical analysis. However, because of the anti-metaphysical standpoint which was characteristic of positivism, it could not accept the notion of the goal of analysis as metaphysical discovery. For the positivists of this school, the goal of philosophical analysis is to clarify the language of science, a clarification which would result from, for example, elucidating the relationships between observation and theory, or between scientific concepts at different levels of abstraction. ( Ibid ., 296) { §6.1 }

A second school [or third school, after ‘classical analysis’ and logical positivism] was inspired (largely, but not entirely) by the thought of Wittgenstein in his later period. Wittgenstein had himself been led tothis new point of view in his criticism of his own Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung ), a book which itself espoused implicitly a certain form of classical analysis. According to Wittgenstein, classical analysis rested upon a false conception of language and of thought. ...

... for an analyst of this sort, philosophical problems do not result from ignorance of the precise meaning of a concept, but from an entirely false conception of its function. ... Such a false conception is what Ryle calls a “category mistake”. To resolve a philosophical problem, one should exhibit the generic character of the concepts involved in it, rather than attempting to give a perfect definition or explication of these concepts. ...

This conception of philosophical analysis—of analysis as the resolution of conceptual enigmas—has sometimes been condescendingly called “therapeutic positivism”. ( Ibid ., 297-9) { §6.1 }

The fourth method of analysis ... is that of Oxford Philosophy. ...

The analytic philosophers of the Cambridge School—for example, Russell and Wittgenstein—came to philosophy after considerable work in the sciences and in mathematics. Philosophy of mathematics was the first topic to which Russell applied his classical method of analysis. But the Oxford philosophers came to their subject, almost without exception, after extensive study of classics. Thus they were naturally interested in words, in syntax, and in (idioms. They did not wish to use linguistic analysis simply to resolve philosophical problems; they were interested in the study of language for its own sake. Therefore these philosophers are, perhaps, both more given to making linguistic distinctions, and better at finding such distinctions, than most. Ibid ., 299) { §6.1 }

Many English philosophers (including many who owe allegiance to Oxford Philosophy) would place themselves at a position between that of Wittgenstein and the view I have just sketched. It may therefore be in point to indicate briefly the principal differences between the two schools:

(1) Wittgensteinian analysis has, for its sole end, the resolution of philosophical enigmas. If there were no such enigmas, there would be no need for analysis. For Oxford, on the other hand, analysis has an intrinsic value.

(2) According to Wittgenstein and his disciples, all that is necessary is to exhibit the generic character of the concepts which we analyze. For Oxford, a minute analysis is indispensable.

(3) For Wittgenstein, analysis is the only useful method in philosophy. For Oxford, it is only one among others, and no one claims that it is sufficient, by itself, to resolve all philosophical problems. ( Ibid ., 301) { §6.1 }

It is not sensible to ask for the method of making one‘s fortune (or of ruining oneself); there are many. It is no more sensible to ask “What is the analytical method?” There is not one “analytic philosophy”. There are several. ( Ibid ., 301 [closing sentences]) { §6.1 }

The primary weapon is analysis. And analysis is the evocation of insight by the hypothetical suggestions of thought, and the evocation of thought by the activities of direct insight. In this process the composite whole, the interrelations, and the things related, concurrently emerge into clarity. ( Essays in Science and Philosophy , New York: Philosophical Library, 1947, 157)

Analysis is often understood to imply a whole of which the parts are explicitly known before the analysis; but logical elements are for our ordinary consciousness only implicit: we use them without reflecting on them, just as we use grammatical distinctions long before we have any knowledge of grammar. Logic does not merely analyse: it makes explicit what was implicit. ( Statement and Inference , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926, 49)

The hypothetical process therefore combines in itself both the method of discovery and the proof, and is the proper scientific exposition. The non-hypothetical proof to which we are accustomed is a sort of scientific pedantry, and it is consequently a great mistake first to give what is called analysis, which corresponds to the hypothetical process, and then to follow it by a synthesis, which is the non-hypothetical part, thus putting aside analysis as if it were a sort of accident. It is an error because it conceals the true process of thinking. ( Ibid. , 560)

I have changed my views on “atomic” complexes: I now think that qualities, relations (like love) etc. are all copulae! That means I for instance analyse a subject-predicate proposition, say, “Socrates is human” into “Socrates” and “something is human”, (which I think is not complex). The reason for this is a very fundamental one. I think that there cannot be different Types of things! In other words whatever can be symbolized by a simple proper name must belong to one type. And further: every theory of types must be rendered superfluous by a proper theory of symbolism: For instance if I analyse the proposition Socrates is mortal into Socrates, mortality and (∃x,y) ∈ 1 (x,y) I want a theory of types to tell me that “mortality is Socrates” is nonsensical, because if I treat “mortality” as a proper name (as I did) there is nothing to prevent me to make the substitution the wrong way round. But if I analyse (as I do now) into Socrates and (∃x).x is mortal or generally into x and (∃x) φx it becomes impossible to substitute the wrong way round because the two symbols are now of a different kind themselves. What I am most certain of is not however the correctness of my present way of analysis, but of the fact that all theory of types must be done away with by a theory of symbolism showing that what seem to be different kinds of things are symbolized by different kinds of symbols which cannot possibly be substituted in one another’s places. I hope I have made this fairly clear!

Propositions which I formerly wrote ∈ 2 (a,R,b) I now write R(a,b) and analyse them into a,b and (∃x,y)R(x,y) [with (∃x,y)R(x,y) marked in the text as “not complex”] ( NB , 121-2) { §6.5 }

How is it reconcilable with the task of philosophy, that logic should take care of itself? If, for example, we ask: Is such and such a fact of the subject-predicate form?, we must surely know what we mean by “subject-predicate form”. We must know whether there is such a form at all. How can we know this? “From the signs”. But how? For we haven’t got any signs of this form. We may indeed say: We have signs that behave like signs of the subject-predicate form, but does that mean that there really must be facts of this form? That is, when those signs are completely analysed? And here the question arises again: Does such a complete analysis exist? And if not : then what is the task of philosophy?!!? ( NB , 2) { §6.5 }

Our difficulty now lies in the fact that to all appearances analysability, or its opposite, is not reflected in language. That is to say: We can not , as it seems, gather from language alone whether for example there are real subject-predicate facts or not. But how COULD we express this fact or its opposite? This must be shewn . ( NB , 10) { §6.5 }

The trivial fact that a completely analysed proposition contains just as many names as there are things contained in its reference [ Bedeutung ]; this fact is an example of the all-embracing representation of the world through language. ( NB , 11) { §6.5 }

The completely analysed proposition must image its reference [ Bedeutung ]. ( NB , 18) { §6.5 }

A question: can we manage without simple objects in LOGIC?

Obviously propositions are possible which contain no simple signs, i.e. no signs which have an immediate reference [ Bedeutung ]. And these are really propositions making sense, nor do the definitions of their component parts have to be attached to them.

But it is clear that components of our propositions can be analysed by means of a definition, and must be, if we want to approximate to the real structure of the proposition. At any rate, then, there is a process of analysis . And can it not now be asked whether this process comes to an end? And if so: What will the end be?

If it is true that every defined sign signifies via its definitions then presumably the chain of definitions must some time have an end. [Cf. TLP 3.261.]

The analysed proposition mentions more than the unanalysed.

Analysis makes the proposition more complicated than it was, but it cannot and must not make it more complicated than its meaning [ Bedeutung ] was from the first.

When the proposition is just as complex as its reference [ Bedeutung ], then it is completely analysed.

But the reference [ Bedeutung ] of our propositions is not infinitely complicated. ( NB , 46) { §6.5 }

But it also seems certain that we do not infer the existence of simple objects from the existence of particular simple objects, but rather know them—by description, as it were—as the end-product of analysis, by means of a process that leads to them. ( NB , 50) { §6.5 }

Let us assume that every spatial object consists of infintely many points, then it is clear that I cannot mention all these by name when I speak of that object. Here then would be a case in which I cannot arrive at the complete analysis in the old sense at all; and perhaps just this is the usual case.

But this is surely clear: the propositions which are the only ones that humanity uses will have a sense just as they are and do not wait upon a future analysis in order to acquire a sense.

Now, however, it seems to be a legitimate question: Are–e.g.–spatial objects composed of simple parts; in analysing them, does one arrive at parts that cannot be further analysed, or is this not the case?

—But what kind of question is this?—

Is it , A PRIORI, clear that in analysing we must arrive at simple components—is this, e.g., involved in the concept of analysis— , or is analysis ad infinitum possible?—Or is there in the end even a third possibility? ( NB , 62) { §6.5 }

In a proposition a thought can be expressed in such a way that elements of the propositional sign correspond to the objects of the thought.

I call such elements ‘simple signs’, and such a proposition ‘completely analysed’. ( TLP , 3.2, 3.201) { §6.5 }

A proposition has one and only one complete analysis. ( TLP , 3.25) { §6.5 }

It is obvious that the analysis of propositions must bring us to elementary propositions which consist of names in immediate combination.

This raises the question how such combination into propositions comes about. ( TLP , 4.221) { §6.5 }

If we know on purely logical grounds that there must be elementary propositions, then everyone who understands propositions in their unanalysed form must know it. ( TLP , 5.5562) { §6.5 }

A proposition is completely logically analysed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in. ( PR , 51; cf. BT , 308) { §6.5 }

Logical analysis is the analysis of something we have, not of something we don’t have. Therefore it is the analysis of propositions as they stand . ( PR , 52) { §6.5 }

a mathematical proof is an analysis of the mathematical proposition. ( PR , 179) { §6.5 }

Complex is not like fact. For I can, e.g., say of a complex that it moves from one place to another, but not of a fact.

But that this complex is now situated here is a fact. ...

A complex is composed of its parts, the things of a kind which go to make it up. (This is of course a grammatical proposition concerning the words ‘complex’, ‘part’ and ‘compose’.)

To say that a red circle is composed of redness and circularity, or is a complex with these component parts, is a misuse of these words and is misleading. (Frege was aware of this and told me.) It is just as misleading to say the fact that this circle is red (that I am tired) is a complex whose component parts are a circle and redness (myself and tiredness).

Neither is a house a complex of bricks and their spatial relations; i.e. that too goes against the correct use of the word. ( PR , 301-2) { §6.5 }

When I say: “My broom is in the corner”,—is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analysed form of the first one.—But why do I call it “further analysed”?—Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another; and this was as it were hidden in the sense of the first sentence, and is expressed in the analysed sentence. Then does someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush?—If we were to ask anyone if he meant this he would probably say that he had not thought specially of the broomstick or specially of the brush at all. And that would be the right answer, for he meant to speak neither of the stick nor of the brush in particular. Suppose that, instead of saying “Bring me the broom”, you said “Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on to it.”!—Isn’t the answer: “DO you want the broom? Why do you put it so oddly?”——Is he going to understand the further analysed sentence better?—This sentence, one might say, achieves the same as the ordinary one, but in a more roundabout way.— Imagine a language-game in which someone is ordered to bring certain objects which are composed of several parts, to move them about, or something else of that kind. And two ways of playing it: in one (a) the composite objects (brooms, chairs, tables, etc.) have names, as in (15); in the other (b) only the parts are given names and the wholes are described by means of them.—In what sense is an order in the second game an analysed form of an order in the first? Does the former lie concealed in the latter, and is it now brought out by analysis?—True, the broom is taken to pieces when one separates broomstick and brush; but does it follow that the order to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts? ...

To say, however, that a sentence in (b) is an ‘analysed’ form of one in (a) readily seduces us into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form; that it alone shews what is meant by the other, and so on. For example, we think: If you have only the unanalysed form you miss the analysis; but if you know the analysed form that gives you everything.—But can I not say that an aspect of the matter is lost on you in the latter case as well as the former? ( PI , §§ 60, 63) { §6.5 }

Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.—Some of them can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called an “analysis” of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a thing apart.

But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved.

It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation. ( PI , §§ 90-1) { §6.5 }

We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. ( PI , §383) { §6.5 }

A list of key works on analysis (monographs and collections) can be found in the

Annotated Bibliography, §1.2 .

Copyright © 2014 by Michael Beaney < michael . beaney @ hu-berlin . de >

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Chapter Six: Analysis and Synthesis

What does it mean to know something? How would you explain the process of thinking? In the 1950s, educational theorist Benjamin Bloom proposed that human cognition, thinking and knowing, could be classified by six categories. 1 Hierarchically arranged in order of complexity, these steps were:

Since his original model, the taxonomy has been revised, as illustrated in the diagram below:

• Each word is an action verb instead of a noun (e.g., “applying” instead of “application”);
• Some words have been changed for different synonyms;
• One version holds “creating” above “evaluating”;
• And, most importantly, other versions are reshaped into a circle, as pictured above. 2

What do you think the significance of these changes is?

I introduce this model of cognition to contextualize analysis as a cognitive tool which can work in tandem with other cognitive tasks and behaviors. Analysis is most commonly used alongside synthesis . To proceed with the LEGO® example from Chapter 4, consider my taking apart the castle as an act of analysis. I study each face of each block intently, even those parts that I can’t see when the castle is fully constructed. In the process of synthesis, I bring together certain blocks from the castle to instead build something else—let’s say, a racecar. By unpacking and interpreting each part , I’m able to build a new whole . 3

In a text wrestling essay, you’re engaging in a process very similar to my castle-to-racecar adventure. You’ll encounter a text and unpack it attentively, looking closely at each piece of language, its arrangement, its signification, and then use it to build an insightful, critical insight about the original text. I might not use every original block, but by exploring the relationship of part-to-whole, I better understand how the castle is a castle. In turn, I am better positioned to act as a sort of tour guide for the castle or a mechanic for the racecar, able to show my readers what about the castle or racecar is important and to explain how it works.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about crafting a thesis for a text wrestling essay and using evidence to support that thesis . As you will discover, an analytical essay involves every tier of Bloom’s Taxonomy, arguably even including “judgement” because your thesis will present an interpretation that is evidence-based and arguable.

Chapter Vocabulary

So What? Turning Observations into a Thesis

It’s likely that you’ve heard the term “thesis statement” multiple times in your writing career. Even though you may have some idea what a thesis entails already, it is worth reviewing and unpacking the expectations surrounding a thesis, specifically in a text wrestling essay.

A thesis statement is a central, unifying insight that drives your analysis or argument. In a typical college essay, this insight should be articulated in one to three sentences, placed within the introductory paragraph or section. As we’ll see below, this is not always the case, but it is what many of your audiences will expect. To put it simply, a thesis is the “So what?” of an analytical or persuasive essay. It answers your audience when they ask, Why does your writing matter? What bigger insights does it yield about the subject of analysis? About our world?

Thesis statements in most rhetorical situations advocate for a certain vision of a text, phenomenon, reality, or policy. Good thesis statements support such a vision using evidence and thinking that confirms, clarifies, demonstrates, nuances, or otherwise relates to that vision. In other words, a thesis is “a proposition that you can prove with evidence…, yet it’s one you have to prove, that isn’t obviously true or merely factual.” 4

In a text wrestling analysis, a thesis pushes beyond basic summary and observation. In other words, it’s the difference between:

If you think of your essay as the human body, the thesis is the spine. Yes, the body can still exist without a spine, but its functionings will be severely limited. Furthermore, everything comes back to and radiates out from the spine: trace back from your fingertips to your backbone and consider how they relate. In turn, each paragraph should tie back to your thesis, offering support and clear connections so your reader can see the entire “body” of your essay. In this way, a thesis statement serves two purposes: it is not only about the ideas of your paper, but also the structure .

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) 5 suggests this specific process for developing your thesis statement:

• Once you’ve read the story or novel closely, look back over your notes for patterns of questions or ideas that interest you. Have most of your questions been about the characters, how they develop or change?

For example: If you are reading Conrad’s  The Secret Agent , do you seem to be most interested in what the author has to say about society? Choose a pattern of ideas and express it in the form of a question and an answer such as the following:

Question:  What does Conrad seem to be suggesting about early twentieth-century London society in his novel  The Secret Agent ? Answer:  Conrad suggests that all classes of society are corrupt.

Pitfalls: Choosing too many ideas. Choosing an idea without any support.

• Once you have some general points to focus on, write your possible ideas and answer the questions that they suggest.

For example: Question :  How does Conrad develop the idea that all classes of society are corrupt? Answer:  He uses images of beasts and cannibalism whether he’s describing socialites, policemen or secret agents.

• To write your thesis statement, all you have to do is turn the question and answer around. You’ve already given the answer, now just put it in a sentence (or a couple of sentences) so that the thesis of your paper is clear.

For example: In his novel,  The Secret Agent , Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.

• Now that you’re familiar with the story or novel and have developed a thesis statement, you’re ready to choose the evidence you’ll use to support your thesis. There are a lot of good ways to do this, but all of them depend on a strong thesis for their direction.

For example: Here’s a student’s thesis about Joseph Conrad’s  The Secret Agent .

In his novel, The Secret Agent, Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.

This thesis focuses on the idea of social corruption and the device of imagery. To support this thesis, you would need to find images of beasts and cannibalism within the text.

There are many ways to write a thesis, and your construction of a thesis statement will become more intuitive and nuanced as you become a more confident and competent writer. However, there are a few tried-and-true strategies that I’ll share with you over the next few pages.

The T3 Strategy

T3 is a formula to create a thesis statement. The T (for Thesis) should be the point you’re trying to make—the “So what?” In a text wrestling analysis, you are expected to advocate for a certain interpretation of a text: this is your “So what?” Examples might include:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of isolated life or Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” suggests that marriage can be oppressive to women

But wait—there’s more! In a text wrestling analysis, your interpretation must be based on evidence from that text. Therefore, your thesis should identify both a focused statement of the interpretation (the whole) and also the particular subjects of your observation (the parts of the text you will focus on support that interpretation). A complete T3 thesis statement for a text wrestling analysis might look more like this:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle using the motif of snow, the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104), and the symbol of his uncle’s car. or “The Story of an Hour” suggests that marriage can be oppressive to women. To demonstrate this theme, Kate Chopin integrates irony, foreshadowing, and symbols of freedom in the story.

Notice the way the T3 allows for the part-to-whole thinking that underlies analysis:

This is also a useful strategy because it can provide structure for your paper: each justifying support for your thesis should be one section of your paper.

• Thesis: In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle using the motif of snow, the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104), and the symbol of his uncle’s car.
• Section on ‘the motif of snow.’ Topic sentence: The recurring imagery of snow creates a tone of frostiness and demonstrates the passage of time.
• Section on ‘the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104).’ Topic sentence: When Capossere repeats “five or six days” (104), he reveals the ambiguity of death in a life not lived.
• Section on ‘the symbol of his uncle’s car.’ Topic sentence: Finally, Capossere’s uncle’s car is symbolic of his lifestyle.

Once you’ve developed a T3 statement, you can revise it to make it feel less formulaic. For example:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle by symbolizing his uncle with a “untouchable” car. Additionally, he repeats images and phrases in the essay to reinforce his uncle’s isolation. or “The Story of an Hour,” a short story by Kate Chopin, uses a plot twist to imply that marriage can be oppressive to women. The symbols of freedom in the story create a feeling of joy, but the attentive reader will recognize the imminent irony.

The O/P Strategy

An occasion/position thesis statement is rhetorically convincing because it explains the relevance of your argument and concisely articulates that argument. Although you should already have your position in mind, your rhetorical occasion will lead this statement off: what sociohistorical conditions make your writing timely, relevant, applicable? Continuing with the previous examples:

As our society moves from individualism to isolationism, Bill Capossere’s “A Wind from the North” is a salient example of a life lived alone. or Although Chopin’s story was written over 100 years ago, it still provides insight to gender dynamics in American marriages.

Following your occasion, state your position—again, this is your “So What?” It is wise to include at least some preview of the parts you will be examining.

As our society moves from individualism to isolationism, Bill Capossere’s “A Wind from the North” is a salient example of a life lived alone. Using recurring images and phrases, Capossere conveys the loneliness of his uncle leading up to his death. or Although Chopin’s story was written over 100 years ago, it still provides insight to gender dynamics in American marriages. “The Story of an Hour” reminds us that marriage has historically meant a surrender of freedom for women.

Research Question and Embedded Thesis

There’s one more common style of thesis construction that’s worth noting, and that’s the inquiry-based thesis. (Read more about inquiry-based research writing in Chapter Eight). For this thesis, you’ll develop an incisive and focused question which you’ll explore throughout the course of the essay. By the end of the essay, you will be able to offer an answer (perhaps a complicated or incomplete answer, but still some kind of answer) to the question. This form is also referred to as the “embedded thesis” or “delayed thesis” organization.

Although this model of thesis can be effectively applied in a text wrestling essay, it is often more effective when combined with one of the other methods above.

Consider the following examples:

Bill Capossere’s essay “A Wind from the North” suggests that isolation results in sorrow and loneliness; is this always the case? How does Capossere create such a vision of his uncle’s life? or Many people would believe that Kate Chopin’s story reflects an outdated perception of marriage—but can “The Story of an Hour” reveal power imbalances in modern relationships, too?

Synthesis: Using Evidence to Explore Your Thesis

Now that you’ve considered what your analytical insight might be (articulated in the form of a thesis), it’s time to bring evidence in to support your analysis—this is the synthesis part of Bloom’s Taxonomy earlier in this chapter. Synthesis refers to the creation of a new whole (an interpretation) using smaller parts (evidence from the text you’ve analyzed).

There are essentially two ways to go about collecting and culling relevant support from the text with which you’re wrestling. In my experience, students are split about evenly on which option is better for them:

Option #1: Before writing your thesis, while you’re reading and rereading your text, annotate the page and take notes. Copy down quotes, images, formal features, and themes that are striking, exciting, or relatable. Then, try to group your collection of evidence according to common traits. Once you’ve done so, choose one or two groups on which to base your thesis. Or Option #2: After writing your thesis , revisit the text looking for quotes, images, and themes that support, elaborate, or explain your interpretation. Record these quotes, and then return to the drafting process.

Once you’ve gathered evidence from your focus text, you should weave quotes, paraphrases, and summaries into your own writing. A common misconception is that you should write “around” your evidence, i.e. choosing the direct quote you want to use and building a paragraph around it. Instead, you should foreground your interpretation and analysis, using evidence in the background to explore and support that interpretation. Lead with your idea, then demonstrate it with evidence; then, explain how your evidence demonstrates your idea.

The appropriate ratio of evidence (their writing) to exposition (your writing) will vary depending on your rhetorical situation, but I advise my students to spend at least as many words unpacking a quote as that quote contains. (I’m referring here to Step #4 in the table below.) For example, if you use a direct quote of 25 words, you ought to spend at least 25 words explaining how that quote supports or nuances your interpretation.

There are infinite ways to bring evidence into your discussion, 6 but for now, let’s take a look at a formula that many students find productive as they find their footing in analytical writing: Front-load + Quote/Paraphrase/Summarize + Cite + Explain/elaborate/analyze.

What might this look like in practice?

The recurring imagery of snow creates a tone of frostiness and demonstrates the passage of time. (1) Snow brings to mind connotations of wintery cold, quiet, and death (2) as a “sky of utter clarity and simplicity” lingers over his uncle’s home and “it [begins] once more to snow” ( (3) Capossere 104). (4) Throughout his essay, Capossere returns frequently to weather imagery, but snow especially, to play on associations the reader has. In this line, snow sets the tone by wrapping itself in with “clarity,” a state of mind. Even though the narrator still seems ambivalent about his uncle, this clarity suggests that he is reflecting with a new and somber understanding.

• Front-load Snow brings to mind connotations of wintery cold, quiet, and death
• Quote as a “sky of utter clarity and simplicity” lingers over his uncle’s home and “it [begins] once more to snow”
• Cite (Capossere 104).
• Explain/elaborate/analysis Throughout his essay, Capossere returns frequently to weather imagery, but snow especially, to play on associations the reader has. In this line, snow sets the tone by wrapping itself in with “clarity,” a state of mind. Even though the narrator still seems ambivalent about his uncle, this clarity suggests that he is reflecting with a new and somber understanding.

This might feel formulaic and forced at first, but following these steps will ensure that you give each piece of evidence thorough attention. Some teachers call this method a “quote sandwich” because you put your evidence between two slices of your own language and interpretation.

For more on front-loading (readerly signposts or signal phrases), see the subsection titled “Readerly Signposts” in Chapter Nine.

Idea Generation: Close Reading Graphic Organizer

The first time you read a text, you most likely will not magically stumble upon a unique, inspiring insight to pursue as a thesis. As discussed earlier in this section, close reading is an iterative process, which means that you must repeatedly encounter a text (reread, re-watch, re-listen, etc.) trying to challenge it, interrogate it, and gradually develop a working thesis.

Very often, the best way to practice analysis is collaboratively, through discussion. Because other people will necessarily provide different perspectives through their unique interpretive positions, reading groups can help you grow your analysis. By discussing a text, you open yourself up to more nuanced and unanticipated interpretations influenced by your peers. Your teacher might ask you to work in small groups to complete the following graphic organizer in response to a certain text. (You can also complete this exercise independently, but it might not yield the same results.)

Thesis Builder

Your thesis statement can and should evolve as you continue writing your paper: teachers will often refer to a thesis as a “working thesis” because the revision process should include tweaking, pivoting, focusing, expanding, and/or rewording your thesis. The exercise on the next two pages, though, should help you develop a working thesis to begin your project. Following the examples, identify the components of your analysis that might contribute to a thesis statement.

Model Texts by Student Authors

(A text wrestling analysis of “Proofs” by Richard Rodriguez)

Songs are culturally important. In the short story “Proofs” by Richard Rodriguez, a young Mexican American man comes to terms with his bi-cultural life. This young man’s father came to America from a small and poverty-stricken Mexican village. The young man flashes from his story to his father’s story in order to explore his Mexican heritage and American life. Midway through the story Richard Rodriguez utilizes the analogies of songs to represent the cultures and how they differ. Throughout the story there is a clash of cultures. Because culture can be experienced through the arts and teachings of a community, Rodriguez uses the songs of the two cultures to represent the protagonist’s bi-cultural experience.

According to Rodriguez, the songs that come from Mexico express an emotional and loving culture and community: “But my mama says there are no songs like the love songs of Mexico” (50). The songs from that culture can be beautiful. It is amazing the love and beauty that come from social capital and community involvement. The language Richard Rodriguez uses to explain these songs is beautiful as well. “—it is the raw edge of sentiment” (51). The author explains how it is the men who keep the songs. No matter how stoic the men are, they have an outlet to express their love and pain as well as every emotion in between. “The cry of a Jackal under the moon, the whistle of a phallus, the maniacal song of the skull” (51). This is an outlet for men to express themselves that is not prevalent in American culture. It expresses a level of love and intimacy between people that is not a part of American culture. The songs from the American culture are different. In America the songs get lost. There is assimilation of cultures. The songs of Mexico are important to the protagonist of the story. There is a clash between the old culture in Mexico and the subject’s new American life represented in these songs.

A few paragraphs later in the story, on page 52, the author tells us the difference in the American song. America sings a different tune. America is the land of opportunity. It represents upward mobility and the ability to “make it or break it.” But it seems there is a cost for all this material gain and all this opportunity. There seems to be a lack of love and emotion, a lack of the ability to express pain and all other feelings, the type of emotion which is expressed in the songs of Mexico. The song of America says, “You can be anything you want to be” (52). The song represents the American Dream. The cost seems to be the loss of compassion, love and emotion that is expressed through the songs of Mexico. There is no outlet quite the same for the stoic men of America. Rodriguez explains how the Mexican migrant workers have all that pain and desire, all that emotion penned up inside until it explodes in violent outbursts. “Or they would come into town on Monday nights for the wrestling matches or on Tuesdays for boxing. They worked over in Yolo County. They were men without women. They were Mexicans without Mexico” (49).

Rodriguez uses the language in the story almost like a song in order to portray the culture of the American dream. The phrase “I will send for you or I will come home rich,” is repeated twice throughout the story. The gain for all this loss of love and compassion is the dream of financial gain. “You have come into the country on your knees with your head down. You are a man” (48). That is the allure of the American Dream.

The protagonist of the story was born in America. Throughout the story he is looking at this illusion of the American Dream through a different frame. He is also trying to come to terms with his own manhood in relation to his American life and Mexican heritage. The subject has the ability to see the two songs in a different light. “The city will win. The city will give the children all the village could not-VCR’s, hairstyles, drumbeat. The city sings mean songs, dirty songs” (52). Part of the subject’s reconciliation process with himself is seeing that all the material stuff that is dangled as part of the American Dream is not worth the love and emotion that is held in the old Mexican villages and expressed in their songs.

Rodriguez represents this conflict of culture on page 53. The protagonist of the story is taking pictures during the arrest of illegal border-crossers. “I stare at the faces. They stare at me. To them I am not bearing witness; I am part of the process of being arrested”(53). The subject is torn between the two cultures in a hazy middle ground. He is not one of the migrants and he is not one of the police. He is there taking pictures of the incident with a connection to both of the groups and both of the groups see him connected with the other.

The old Mexican villages are characterized by a lack of : “Mexico is poor” (50). However, this is not the reason for the love and emotion that is held. The thought that people have more love and emotion because they are poor is a misconception. There are both rich people and poor people who have multitudes of love and compassion. The defining elements in creating love and emotion for each other comes from the level of community interaction and trust—the ability to sing these love songs and express emotion towards one another. People who become caught up in the American Dream tend to be obsessed with their own personal gain. This diminishes the social interaction and trust between fellow humans. There is no outlet in the culture of America quite the same as singing love songs towards each other. It does not matter if they are rich or poor, lack of community, trust, and social interaction; lack of songs can lead to lack of love and emotion that is seen in the old songs of Mexico.

The image of the American Dream is bright and shiny. To a young boy in a poor village the thought of power and wealth can dominate over a life of poverty with love and emotion. However, there is poverty in America today as well as in Mexico. The poverty here looks a little different but many migrants and young men find the American Dream to be an illusion. “Most immigrants to America came from villages.

The America that Mexicans find today, at the decline of the century, is a closed-circuit city of ramps and dark towers, a city without God. The city is evil. Turn. Turn” (50). The song of America sings an inviting tune for young men from poor villages. When they arrive though it is not what they dreamed about. The subject of the story can see this. He is trying to come of age in his own way, acknowledging America and the Mexico of old. He is able to look back and forth in relation to the America his father came to for power and wealth and the America that he grew up in. All the while, he watches this migration of poor villages, filled with love and emotion, to a big heartless city, while referring back to his father’s memory of why he came to America and his own memories of growing up in America. “Like wandering Jews. They carried their home with them, back and forth: they had no true home but the tabernacle of memory” (51). The subject of the story is experiencing all of this conflict of culture and trying to compose his own song.

Works Cited

Rodriguez, Richard. “Proofs.” In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction , edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, Norton, 1996, pp. 48-54.

Normal Person: An Analysis of the Standards of Normativity in “A Plague of Tics” 9

David Sedaris’ essay “A Plague of Tics” describes Sedaris’ psychological struggles he encountered in his youth, expressed through obsessive-compulsive tics. These abnormal behaviors heavily inhibited his functionings, but more importantly, isolated and embarrassed him during his childhood, adolescence, and young adult years. Authority figures in his life would mock him openly, and he constantly struggled to perform routine simple tasks in a timely manner, solely due to the amount of time that needed to be set aside for carrying out these compulsive tics. He lacked the necessary social support an adolescent requires because of his apparent abnormality. But when we look at the behaviors of his parents, as well as the socially acceptable tics of our society more generally, we see how Sedaris’ tics are in fact not too different, if not less harmful than those of the society around him. By exploring Sedaris’ isolation, we can discover that socially constructed standards of normativity are at best arbitrary, and at worst violent.

As a young boy, Sedaris is initially completely unaware that his tics are not socially acceptable in the outside world. He is puzzled when his teacher, Miss Chestnut, correctly guesses that he is “going to hit [himself] over the head with [his] shoe” (361), despite the obvious removal of his shoe during their private meeting. Miss Chestnut continues by embarrassingly making fun out of the fact that Sedaris’ cannot help but “bathe her light switch with [his] germ-ridden tongue” (361) repeatedly throughout the school day. She targets Sedaris with mocking questions, putting him on the spot in front of his class; this behavior is not ethical due to Sedaris’ age. It violates the trust that students should have in their teachers and other caregivers. Miss Chestnut criticizes him excessively for his ambiguous, child-like answers. For example, she drills him on whether it is “healthy to hit ourselves over the head with our shoes” (361) and he “guess[es] that it was not,” (361) as a child might phrase it. She ridicules his use of the term “guess,” using obvious examples of instances when guessing would not be appropriate, such as “[running] into traffic with a paper sack over [her] head” (361). Her mockery is not only rude, but ableist and unethical. Any teacher—at least nowadays—should recognize that Sedaris needs compassion and support, not emotional abuse.

These kinds of negative responses to Sedaris’ behavior continue upon his return home, in which the role of the insensitive authority figure is taken on by his mother. In a time when maternal support is crucial for a secure and confident upbringing, Sedaris’ mother was never understanding of his behavior, and left little room for open, honest discussion regarding ways to cope with his compulsiveness. She reacted harshly to the letter sent home by Miss Chestnut, nailing Sedaris, exclaiming that his “goddamned math teacher” (363) noticed his strange behaviors, as if it should have been obvious to young, egocentric Sedaris. When teachers like Miss Chestnut meet with her to discuss young David’s problems, she makes fun of him, imitating his compulsions; Sedaris is struck by “a sharp, stinging sense of recognition” upon viewing this mockery (365). Sedaris’ mother, too, is an authority figure who maintains ableist standards of normativity by taunting her own son. Meeting with teachers should be an opportunity to truly help David, not tease him.

On the day that Miss Chestnut makes her appearance in the Sedaris household to discuss his behaviors with his mother, Sedaris watches them from the staircase, helplessly embarrassed. We can infer from this scene that Sedaris has actually become aware of that fact that his tics are not considered to be socially acceptable, and that he must be “the weird kid” among his peers—and even to his parents and teachers. His mother’s cavalier derision demonstrates her apparent disinterest in the well-being of he son, as she blatantly brushes off his strange behaviors except in the instance during which she can put them on display for the purpose of entertaining a crowd. What all of these pieces of his mother’s flawed personality show us is that she has issues too—drinking and smoking, in addition to her poor mothering—but yet Sedaris is the one being chastised while she lives a normal life. Later in the essay, Sedaris describes how “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic” (366), drawing a parallel to his mother’s drinking and smoking. From this comparison, we can begin to see flawed standards of “normal behavior”: although many people drink and smoke (especially at the time the story takes place), these habits are much more harmful than what Sedaris does in private.

Sedaris’ father has an equally harmful personality, but it manifests differently. Sedaris describes him as a hoarder, one who has, “saved it all: every last Green Stamp and coupon, every outgrown bathing suit and scrap of linoleum” (365). Sedaris’ father attempts to “cure [Sedaris] with a series of threats” (366). In one scene, he even enacts violence upon David by slamming on the brakes of the car while David has his nose pressed against a windshield. Sedaris reminds us that his behavior might have been unusual, but it wasn’t violent: “So what if I wanted to touch my nose to the windshield? Who was I hurting?” (366). In fact, it is in that very scene that Sedaris draws the aforementioned parallel to his mother’s drinking: when Sedaris discovers that “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic,” it is while his father is driving around “with a lapful of rejected, out-of-state coupons” (366). Not only is Sedaris’ father violating the trust David places in him as a caregiver; his hoarding is an arguably unhealthy habit that simply happens to be more socially acceptable than licking a concrete toadstool. Comparing Sedaris’s tics to his father’s issues, it is apparent that his father’s are much more harmful than his own. None of the adults in Sedaris’ life are innocent—“mother smokes and Miss Chestnut massaged her waist twenty, thirty times a day—and here I couldn’t press my nose against the windshield of a car” (366)—but nevertheless, Sedaris’s problems are ridiculed or ignored by the ‘normal’ people in his life, again bringing into question what it means to be a normal person.

In high school, Sedaris’ begins to take certain measures to actively control and hide his socially unacceptable behaviors. “For a time,” he says, “I thought that if I accompanied my habits with an outlandish wardrobe, I might be viewed as eccentric rather than just plain retarded” (369). Upon this notion, Sedaris starts to hang numerous medallions around his neck, reflecting that he “might as well have worn a cowbell” (369) due to the obvious noises they made when he would jerk his head violently, drawing more attention to his behaviors (the opposite of the desired effect). He also wore large glasses, which he now realizes made it easier to observe his habit of rolling his eyes into his head, and “clunky platform shoes [that] left lumps when used to discreetly tap [his] forehead” (369). Clearly Sedaris was trying to appear more normal, in a sense, but was failing terribly. After high school, Sedaris faces the new wrinkle of sharing a college dorm room. He conjures up elaborate excuses to hide specific tics, ensuring his roommate that “there’s a good chance the brain tumor will shrink” (369) if he shakes his head around hard enough and that specialists have ordered him to perform “eye exercises to strengthen what they call he ‘corneal fibers’” (369). He eventually comes to a point of such paranoid hypervigilance that he memorizes his roommate’s class schedule to find moments to carry out his tics in privacy. Sedaris worries himself sick attempting to approximate ‘normal’: “I got exactly fourteen minutes of sleep during my entire first year of college” (369). When people are pressured to perform an identity inconsistent with their own—pressured by socially constructed standards of normativity—they harm themselves in the process. Furthermore, even though the responsibility does not necessarily fall on Sedaris’ peers to offer support, we can assume that their condemnation of his behavior reinforces the standards that oppress him.

Sedaris’ compulsive habits peak and begin their slow decline when he picks up the new habit of smoking cigarettes, which is of course much more socially acceptable while just as compulsive in nature once addiction has the chance to take over. He reflects, from the standpoint of an adult, on the reason for the acquired habit, speculating that “maybe it was coincidental, or perhaps … much more socially acceptable than crying out in tiny voices” (371). He is calmed by smoking, saying that “everything’s fine as long I know there’s a cigarette in my immediate future” (372). (Remarkably, he also reveals that he has not truly been cured, as he revisits his former tics and will “dare to press [his] nose against the doorknob or roll his eyes to achieve that once-satisfying ache” [372.]) Sedaris has officially achieved the tiresome goal of appearing ‘normal’, as his compulsive tics seemed to “[fade] out by the time [he] took up with cigarettes” (371). It is important to realize, however, that Sedaris might have found a socially acceptable way to mask his tics, but not a healthy one. The fact that the only activity that could take place of his compulsive tendencies was the dangerous use of a highly addictive substance, one that has proven to be dangerously harmful with frequent and prolonged use, shows that he is conforming to the standards of society which do not correspond with healthy behaviors.

In a society full of dangerous, inconvenient, or downright strange habits that are nevertheless considered socially acceptable, David Sedaris suffered through the psychic and physical violence and negligence of those who should have cared for him. With what we can clearly recognize as a socially constructed disability, Sedaris was continually denied support and mocked by authority figures. He struggled to socialize and perform academically while still carrying out each task he was innately compelled to do, and faced consistent social hardship because of his outlandish appearance and behaviors that are viewed in our society as “weird.” Because of ableist, socially constructed standards of normativity, Sedaris had to face a long string of turmoil and worry that most of society may never come to completely understand. We can only hope that as a greater society, we continue sharing and studying stories like Sedaris’ so that we critique the flawed guidelines we force upon different bodies and minds, and attempt to be more accepting and welcoming of the idiosyncrasies we might deem to be unfavorable.

Teacher Takeaways

“The student clearly states their thesis in the beginning, threading it through the essay, and further developing it through a synthesized conclusion. The student’s ideas build logically through the essay via effective quote integration: the student sets up the quote, presents it clearly, and then responds to the quote with thorough analysis that links it back to their primary claims. At times this thread is a bit difficult to follow; as one example, when the student talks about the text’s American songs, it’s not clear how Rodriguez’s text illuminates the student’s thesis. Nor is it clear why the student believes Rodriguez is saying the “American Dream is not worth the love and emotion.” Without this clarification, it’s difficult to follow some of the connections the student relies on for their thesis, so at times it seems like they may be stretching their interpretation beyond what the text supplies.”– Professor Dannemiller

“I like how this student follows their thesis through the text, highlighting specific instances from Sedaris’s essay that support their analysis. Each instance of this evidence is synthesized with the student’s observations and connected back to their thesis statement, allowing for the essay to capitalize on the case being built in their conclusion. At the ends of some earlier paragraphs, some of this ‘spine-building’ is interrupted with suggestions of how characters in the essay should behave, which doesn’t always clearly link to the thesis’s goals. Similarly, some information isn’t given a context to help us understand its relevance, such as what violating the student-teacher trust has to do with normativity being a social construct, or how Sedaris’s description of ‘a blow to the nose’ being a narcotic creates a parallel to his mother’s drinking and smoking. Without further analysis and synthesis of this information the reader is left to guess how these ideas connect.”– Professor Dannemiller

Sedaris, David. “A Plague of Tics.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology , 4 th edition, edited by Samuel Cohen, Bedford, 2013, pp. 359-372.

Analyzing “Richard Cory” 10

In the poem “Richard Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson, a narrative is told about the character Richard Cory by those who admired him. In the last stanza, the narrator, who uses the pronoun “we,” tells us that Richard Cory commits suicide. Throughout most of the poem, though, Cory had been described as a wealthy gentleman. The “people on the pavement” (2), the speakers of the poem, admired him because he presented himself well, was educated, and was wealthy. The poem presents the idea that, even though Cory seemed to have everything going for him, being wealthy does not guarantee happiness or health.

Throughout the first three stanzas Cory is described in a positive light, which makes it seem like he has everything that he could ever need. Specifically, the speaker compares Cory directly and indirectly to royalty because of his wealth and his physical appearance: “He was a gentleman from sole to crown, / Clean favored and imperially slim” (Robinson 3-4). In line 3, the speaker is punning on “soul” and “crown.” At the same time, Cory is both a gentleman from foot (sole) to head (crown) and also soul to crown. The use of the word “crown” instead of head is a clever way to show that Richard was thought of as a king to the community. The phrase “imperially slim” can also be associated with royalty because imperial comes from “empire.” The descriptions used gave clear insight that he was admired for his appearance and manners, like a king or emperor.

In other parts of the poem, we see that Cory is ‘above’ the speakers. The first lines, “When Richard Cory went down town, / We people on the pavement looked at him” (1-2), show that Cory is not from the same place as the speakers. The words “down” and “pavement” also suggest a difference in status between Cory and the people. The phrase “We people on the pavement” used in the first stanza (Robinson 2), tells us that the narrator and those that they are including in their “we” may be homeless and sleeping on the pavement; at the least, this phrase shows that “we” are below Cory.

In addition to being ‘above,’ Cory is also isolated from the speakers. In the second stanza, we can see that there was little interaction between Cory and the people on the pavement: “And he was always human when he talked; / But still fluttered pulses when he said, / ‘Good- morning’” (Robinson 6-8). Because people are “still fluttered” by so little, we can speculate that it was special for them to talk to Cory. But these interactions gave those on the pavement no insight into Richard’s real feelings or personality. Directly after the descriptions of the impersonal interactions, the narrator mentions that “he was rich—yes, richer than a king” (Robinson 9). At the same time that Cory is again compared to royalty, this line reveals that people were focused on his wealth and outward appearance, not his personal life or wellbeing.

The use of the first-person plural narration to describe Cory gives the reader the impression that everyone in Cory’s presence longed to have the life that he did. Using “we,” the narrator speaks for many people at once. From the end of the third stanza to the end of the poem, the writing turns from admirable description of Richard to a noticeably more melancholy, dreary description of what those who admired Richard had to do because they did not have all that Richard did. These people had nothing, but they thought that he was everything. To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread…. (Robinson 9-12)

They sacrificed their personal lives and food to try to rise up to Cory’s level. They longed to not be required to struggle. A heavy focus on money and materialistic things blocked their ability to see what Richard Cory was actually feeling or going through. I suggest that “we” also includes the reader of the poem. If we read the poem this way, “Richard Cory” critiques the way we glorify wealthy people’s lives to the point that we hurt ourselves. Our society values financial success over mental health and believes in a false narrative about social mobility.

Though the piece was written more than a century ago, the perceived message has not been lost. Money and materialistic things do not create happiness, only admiration and alienation from those around you. Therefore, we should not sacrifice our own happiness and leisure for a lifestyle that might not make us happy. The poem’s message speaks to our modern society, too, because it shows a stigma surrounding mental health: if people have “everything / To make us wish that we were in [their] place” (11-12), we often assume that they don’t deal with the same mental health struggles as everyone. “Richard Cory” reminds us that we should take care of each other, not assume that people are okay because they put up a good front.

“I enjoy how this author uses evidence: they use a signal phrase (front-load) before each direct quote and take plenty of time to unpack the quote afterward. This author also has a clear and direct thesis statement which anticipates the content of their analysis. I would advise them, though, to revise that thesis by ‘previewing’ the elements of the text they plan to analyze. This could help them clarify their organization, since a thesis should be a road-map.”– Professor Wilhjelm

Robinson, Edward Arlington. “Richard Cory.” The Norton Introduction to Literature , Shorter 12 th edition, edited by Kelly J. Mays, Norton, 2017, p. 482.

the cognitive process and/or rhetorical mode of studying constituent parts to demonstrate an interpretation of a larger whole.

a part or combination of parts that lends support or proof to an arguable topic, idea, or interpretation.

a cognitive and rhetorical process by which an author brings together parts of a larger whole to create a unique new product. Examples of synthesis might include an analytical essay, found poetry, or a mashup/remix.

a 1-3 sentence statement outlining the main insight(s), argument(s), or concern(s) of an essay; not necessary in every rhetorical situation; typically found at the beginning of an essay, though sometimes embedded later in the paper. Also referred to as a “So what?” statement.

EmpoWORD: A Student-Centered Anthology and Handbook for College Writers Copyright © 2018 by Shane Abrams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Analysis and Synthesis

Why it matters: analysis and synthesis.

The skills of analysis and synthesis are vital to academic writing; they are necessary for you to establish your ethos with fellow scholars and professionals in your field. In academic writing, you must first research and understand the conversation around a specific topic before you can attempt to add to it. In order to understand this conversation, you need to locate credible and recent academic sources on the topic, analyze them individually, and then synthesize them in order to identify patterns, trends, gaps, limitations, etc.

In this unit, we will discuss the importance of analyzing each source individually, and then synthesizing them with other, similar sources to understand the current state of the research surrounding the topic. Basically, if you want to learn more about your field, you must read credible sources that are backed by primary and secondary research; you must learn to understand these sources in isolation as well as how they fit together.

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Network Analysis and Synthesis Short Questions with solution.

All Short Important Questions that Might Be Asked During Future Network Analysis and Synthesis Exams Are Provided. I sincerely hope you would appreciate it and continue to follow Bachelorexam.com.

UNIT:-01 (Node and Mesh Analysis)

1. Write Kirchhoff’s law.

Ans. Kirchhoff’s current law (KCL): At all times, the algebraic total of the branch currents at a node equals zero.

Kirchhoff’s voltage law (KVL) : All branch voltages around every closed loop in a network have an algebraic total that is always equal to zero.

2. What is duality and write any two limitations of dual network ?

Ans. Currents and voltages are switched during a duality transition. If two phenomena can be described by equations with the same mathematical form, they are said to be dual.

Limitations :

• 1. Due of its non-linearity, power has no dual network. 
• 2. A circuit element might not have a dual network like mutual inductance even though linearity is applicable.

3. Define ideal voltage and current source.

Ans. Ideal voltage source : If the internal resistance of a voltage source is zero, then it is an ideal source element capable of supplying any current at a constant voltage. The terminal voltage is unaffected by the quantity of load current since it is equal to the voltage across the source.

Ideal current source: Ideal current source is a source that delivers a constant current to a load regardless when the load’s impedance changes. Regardless of the load impedance, the current delivered by such a source should be constant.

4. What information is obtained from the loop?

Ans From a loop, the algebraic sum of potential differences is obtained.

5. Define nodes.

Ans. A link between two or more circuit components is referred to as a node.

6. Explain mesh in electrical network.

Ans A closed path surrounding a circuit that doesn’t have any other closed paths inside of it is referred to as a mesh.

7. What are the utilities of duality of network?

Ans It makes resolving challenging network issues relatively simple.

8. What is a loop ?

Ans A loop is a closed path that is created by starting at a node and following the path back to it without crossing any intermediary nodes more than once.

9. When is mesh analysis preferred over nodal analysis ?

Ans Mesh analysis is preferred over nodal analysis :

• 1. when there are several voltage sources or simply voltage sources in the circuit.
• 2. when there are more meshes than nodes in the circuit.
• 3. when it is necessary to determine many currents.

10. When is nodal analysis preferred over mesh analysis ?

Ans Nodal analysis is preferred over mesh analysis:

• 1. When there are one or more current sources present in the circuit.
• 2. When there are fewer nodes in the circuit than meshes.
• 3. When the need for node voltage arises.
• 4. The only method available when the network is non-planar is nodal analysis.

11. If a circuit has B branches and N nodes including reference nodes, how many meshes are there?

Ans. Number of meshes = Branches – (Nodes -1),

M = B – (N – 1)

12. What is a planar circuit ?

Ans A circuit that may be drawn on a level surface without crossings is called a planar circuit.

13. What is a non-planar circuit ?

Ans A circuit that cannot be drawn without crossings on a flat surface is said to be non-planar.

14. When are two networks said to be duals of each other ?

Ans If two networks are controlled by the same set of equations, they are said to be duals of one another.

15. Write pairs of dual terms for electrical networks.

Ans. Current-voltage, resistance-conductance, inductance-capacitance, loop-node, series-parallel, open-short, and KCL-KVL are a few dual terminology for electrical circuits.

UNIT:-02 (Network Theorems)

1. State superposition theorem.

Ans Any element of a linear bilateral RLC network with multiple independent voltage and current sources would respond according to the algebraic sum of the responses that each source working independently would provide.

2. Write the application of superposition theorem with its statement.

• 1. This proposition holds true for every kind of linear circuit with time-varying or time-invariant components.
• 2. When the circuit contains a lot of different independent sources, this theorem is utilised to determine the current or voltage in a branch.

3. Give limitations of the superposition theorem.

• 1. Not suitable to networks that have unilateral or non-linear components.
• 2. Does not apply to nonlinear characteristics like power.
• 3. Power relations are not covered by this theorem.

4. Write the statement of Thevenin’s theorem.

Ans An equivalent circuit made up of a voltage source can substitute any two-terminal linear network with sources (generators) and impedances. The open circuit voltage between the network terminals is V th in series with the impedance, and Z th is the impedance measured between the terminals of the network after all energy sources have been removed.

5. What are the limitations of Thevenin’s theorem ?

• 1. Loads that are magnetically connected to other branches of the circuit are not covered by this theorem.
• 2. Unilateral and non-linear networks cannot be used to prove this theorem.
• 3. Active load is excluded from this theorem.
• 4. There should be no dependent sources in the load.

6. State the reciprocity theorem and write its advantages.

 Ans. It claims that regardless of the position of excitation and response inside a linear time-varying network, the reaction to excitation remains constant.

Advantages:

• 1. Applicable to a network made up of transformers and linear, time-invariant, bilateral passive devices.
• 2. In order to apply this theorem, all initial conditions must be zero and we must only take into account the zero-state response.

7. Mention the important points of Norton’s theorem.

• 1. Applicable to any linear, bilateral, active network.
• 2. Inapplicable to non-linear and unilateral networks.
• 3. This theorem is inapplicable for active load.

8. What do you understand about the maximum power transfer theorem?

Ans When the impedance of one network is the complex conjugate of the other, the maximum power can be absorbed by another network connected to it at two terminals.

9. What do you understand about the compensation theorem?

Ans Any branch carrying a current I in a linear, bilateral, active network would experience changes in impedance Z that are the same as those that would have been brought about by the injection of a voltage source of -16Z in the modified branch.

10. State Tellegen’s theorem.

Ans. Tellegen’s theorem states that for a network of n elements and e nodes, ifa set of current passing through various elements be i 1 , i 2 , …., i e satisfying KCL and its set of voltages be V 1 , V 2 , …., V e satisfying KVL for every loop, then Tellegen’s theorem is

11. What is the condition for maximum power transfer in a network? Also mention any two applications of maximum power transfer theorem .

Ans Condition for maximum power transfer : Maximum power will be transferred when the load resistance is equal to the source resistance i.e.,

                            R s = R L

Applications of maximum power transfer theorem:

1. In the communication system.

2. In car engines.

12. Where is the compensation theorem mainly used ?

Ans Bridge and potentiometer circuits.

13. What is the limitation of the reciprocity theorem?

Ans It does not apply to multisource networks and only applies to single source networks. Additionally, neither time-varying elements nor dependent sources should be present in the network.

14. Why does the superposition principle cannot be applied directly to find power?

Ans. Due to the non-linear relationship between current and power, the superposition principle cannot be used to directly determine power.

15. If a circuit contains no independent energy sources, what are the values of V Th and I N

Ans. Both V TH and y N are zero, and the circuit has only the equivalent Thevenin resistance.

16. What is the efficiency of the circuit under the condition of maximum power transfer ?

Ans. When power transfer is at its highest, the circuit’s efficiency is 50%.

UNIT:-03 (Fourier Series)

1. What is the Fourier series?

Ans The Fourier series is a linear combination of orthogonal functions that describes signals over a given period of time.

2. Write Dirichlet’s conditions for the existence of Fourier series.

Ans. Dirichlet’s conditions are the circumstances in which a periodic signal can be represented by a Fourier series. They areas follows:

In each period,

i The function x(t) must be a single valued function.

ii. The function x(t) has only a finite number of maxima and minima.

iii. The function x(t) has a finite number of discontinuities.

iv. The function x(t) is absolutely integrable over one period, that is

3. Discuss even symmetry and odd symmetry .

Ans. A function x(t) is said to have even symmetry, if x(t) = x(-t).

A function z(t) is said to have odd symmetry, if x(-t) = – x(t).

4. What is half wave symmetry ?

Ans A function x(t) is said to have half wave symmetry, if

When it exists, only odd harmonics will be present.

5. What do you understand about the Fourier transform?

Ans. Using the Fourier transform, signals can be converted from the continuous time domain to the frequency domain and vice versa.

6. Mention the merits of Fourier transform.

• 1. It can be used to retrieve the original time function in a singular way.
• 2. The Fourier transform can be used to assess convolution integrals.

7. Differentiate between Fourier series and Fourier transform .

8. Give the applications of Fourier transform.

• 1. Analysis of LTI systems
• 2. Cryptography
• 3. Signal analysis
• 4. Signal processing

9. What is the frequency spectrum?

Ans The magnitude spectrum is the plot of |H(o)| versus a, and the phase spectrum is the plot of ZH(o) versus 0 1s. The frequency response is the sum of the amplitude spectrum and phase spectrum.

10. What are the cases of unbalanced load in a three-phase

• 1. Unbalanced delta-connected load
• 2. Unbalanced three-wire, star-connected load
• 3. Unbalanced four-wire, star-connected load

11. Find the Fourier transform of x(t-t 0 )

Ans. Let the function is x(t-t 0 )

12. What are the methods to solve three-phase, three-wire, star connected unbalanced loads 2

1. Star-delta transformation

2. Millman’s method.

13. Which method is used to measure the power in balanced and unbalanced load ?

Ans The power in both balanced and unbalanced loads can be measured using the three-wattmeter method and the two-wattmeter method, but the power in just balanced loads can be measured using the one-wattmeter method.

14. How are powers in a three-phase balanced load calculated   

15. What is the relation between line and phase voltages in a star-connected system ?

16. What is the relation between line and phase current in a delta-connected system ?

UNIT:-04 (Laplace Transform)

1. Give the advantages of Laplace transform.

• 1. Laplace transforms converge signals that do not converge in Fourier transforms.
• 2. S-domain multiplication can be used to obtain convolution in the time domain.
• 3. System integro-differential equations can be transformed into straightforward algebraic equations. Laplace transforms can therefore be used to quickly investigate LTI systems.

2. Write the disadvantages of Laplace transform.

• Ans. 1. The Laplace domain integral representation is challenging.
• 2. The system’s frequency response cannot be approximated or drawn. Only the pole-zero layout can be drawn in its place.
• 3. S =j W is used only for sinusoidal steady-state analysis.

3. Compare Laplace transform and Fourier transform.

4. Mention the applications of Laplace transform.

• 1. For system modeling.
• 2. Used to solve differential equations.
• 3. Used in electrical circuits for the analysis of linear time invariant systems.

5. How are resistance (R), inductance (L) and capacitance (C) transformed into s-domain 1

Ans Remains as R in s-domain,

L transforms to Ls in s-domain,

C transforms to 1/ Cs in s-domain .

6. What are the basic elements in electrical circuits ?

• 1. Resistor,
• 2. Inductor and
• 3. Capacitor.

7. Write the v-i relationship in the case of

i. Pure resistance,

ii. Pure inductance

iii. Pure capacitance.

8. Define the transfer function of a system.

Ans When the beginning conditions are ignored, the transfer function of a system is defined as the ratio of the Laplace transform of the output to the Laplace transform of the input.

9. State initial value theorem.

10. State final value theorem.

11. When does the Laplace transform of a function f(t) exist ?

12. What is the relation between Laplace transform and Fourier transform ?

UNIT:-05 (Transient Behavior)

1. Write system stability conditions.

Ans. 1. All of a linear system’s poles must have negative real parts, or they must be located on the left side of the s-plane, for the system to be stable.

2. A system is considered marginally stable if one or more of its poles lie on the hypothetical axis of the s-plane and its natural response contains non-decaying oscillation components.

2. What are the advantages of the transfer function ?

• 1. It provides a straightforward algebraic equation.
• 2. It directly provides the system’s poles and zeros.
• 3. It is simple to assess the system’s stability.
• 4. It is simple to calculate the system’s output for any input.

3. What are the disadvantages of transfer function ?

• 1. It works with the LTI system.
• 2. It does not consider the beginning situation.
• 3. Only applicable for a single input and output.
• 4. It is impossible to determine controllability and observability.

4. What are poles and zeros ?

Ans Crucial complex frequencies known as poles and zeros are critical complex frequencies when the network function has infinite value and zero value, respectively.

5. What do complex frequencies corresponding to system poles and excitation poles reveal ?

Ans: While complex frequencies corresponding to excitation poles disclose the forced or steady reaction and depend on the driving force, complex frequencies corresponding to system poles reveal the system’s natural or transient response and depend on the system function.

6. For a two-port network define the driving point functions and transfer functions

Ans Driving point functions :

Transfer functions :

7. What is a filter ?

Ans A filter is a frequency selective network that completely suppresses all other bands while freely passing the chosen bands of frequencies.

8. How are filters classified ?

Ans The four common types of filters are low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, and band-elimination.

9. What is a low-pass filter?

Ans A low-pass filter is one that attenuates all frequencies above the cut-off frequency f while permitting all frequencies below it to pass without attenuation.

10. What is a high-pass filter ?

Ans A high-pass filter attenuates all frequencies below a specified cut-off frequency f while allowing all frequencies above that frequency to pass.

11. What is a band-pass filter ?

Ans A band-pass filter is one that attenuates all frequencies above and below two predetermined cut-off frequencies while passing all frequencies in between.

12. What is a band-stop filter ?

Ans. A band-stop filter is one that attenuates all frequencies between two preset frequencies while passing all frequencies outside of the range.

13. Why are z-parameters called open circuit impedance parameters ?

Ans. Z-parameters are referred to as open since they are measured in terms of impedance and are determined in an open circuit.

14. Why ABCD-parameters are called transmission parameters ?

Ans Due to its widespread application in transmission line theory and cascade networks, ABCD-parameters are also known as transmission parameters.

15. Where are hybrid parameters mostly used?

Ans. Transistor circuits frequently use hybrid parameters.

16. What is the transmission matrix of a cascade of two-part networks?

Ans The sum of the transmission matrices of each individual two-port network makes up the transmission matrix of a cascade of two-port networks.

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• Published: 02 January 2022

The roles, activities and impacts of middle managers who function as knowledge brokers to improve care delivery and outcomes in healthcare organizations: a critical interpretive synthesis

• Faith Boutcher 1 ,
• Whitney Berta 2 ,
• Robin Urquhart 3 &
• Anna R. Gagliardi 4  

BMC Health Services Research volume  22 , Article number:  11 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Middle Managers (MMs) are thought to play a pivotal role as knowledge brokers (KBs) in healthcare organizations. However, the role of MMs who function as KBs (MM KBs) in health care is under-studied. Research is needed that contributes to our understanding of how MMs broker knowledge in health care and what factors influence their KB efforts.

We used a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) approach to review both qualitative and quantitative studies to develop an organizing framework of how MMs enact the KB role in health care. We used compass questions to create a search strategy and electronic searches were conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL, Social Sciences Abstracts, ABI/INFORM, EMBASE, PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC and the Cochrane Library. Searching, sampling, and data analysis was an iterative process, using constant comparison, to synthesize the results.

We included 41 articles (38 empirical studies and 3 conceptual papers) that met the eligibility criteria. No existing review was found on this topic. A synthesis of the studies revealed 12 MM KB roles and 63 associated activities beyond existing roles hypothesized by extant theory, and we elaborate on two MM KB roles: 1) convincing others of the need for, and benefit of an innovation or evidence-based practice; and 2) functioning as a strategic influencer. We identified organizational and individual factors that may influence the efforts of MM KBs in healthcare organizations. Additionally, we found that the MM KB role was associated with enhanced provider knowledge, and skills, as well as improved organizational outcomes.

Our findings suggest that MMs do enact KB roles in healthcare settings to implement innovations and practice change. Our organizing framework offers a novel conceptualization of MM KBs that advances understanding of the emerging KB role that MMs play in healthcare organizations. In addition to roles, this study contributes to the extant literature by revealing factors that may influence the efforts and impacts of MM KBs in healthcare organizations. Future studies are required to refine and strengthen this framework.

Trial registration

A protocol for this review was not registered.

Peer Review reports

Contributions to the literature

MMs may play an important KB role in healthcare organizations.

Additional support for the MM KB role may help enhance quality of care in healthcare settings.

An improved understanding of MM KBs will contribute to this nascent area of inquiry in health care.

Health systems are under increasing pressure to improve performance including productivity, quality of care, and efficiency in service delivery. To promote optimal performance, health systems hold healthcare organizations such as hospitals accountable for the quality of care they provide through accountability agreements tied to performance targets [ 1 , 2 ]. Despite such incentives, healthcare organizations face considerable challenges in providing high-quality care and research continues to show that the quality of hospital-based care is less than ideal [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Some researchers contend that this is attributed, in part, to the challenges that healthcare organizations face when integrating new knowledge into practice. Some challenges include dedicating sufficient resources to adopt or implement evidence-informed innovations that enhance service delivery and optimize patient health and outcomes [ 6 ].

Healthcare organizations use knowledge translation (KT) approaches to promote the use of evidence-based practices intended to optimize quality of care. The use of knowledge brokers (KBs) is one such approach. KBs are defined as the human component of KT who work collaboratively with stakeholders to facilitate the transfer and exchange of knowledge in diverse settings, [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. KBs that facilitate the use of knowledge between people or groups have been referred to as opinion leaders, facilitators, champions, linking agents and change agents whose roles can be formal or informal [ 10 , 11 ]. These “influencer” roles are based on the premise that interpersonal contact improves the likelihood of behavioral change associated with use or adoption of new knowledge [ 12 ]. Research shows that KBs have had a positive effect on increasing knowledge and evidence-based practices among clinicians in hospitals, and on advocating for change on behalf of clinicians to executives [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. However, greater insight is needed on how to equip and support KBs, so they effectively promote and enable clinicians to use evidence-based practices that improve quality of care [ 13 , 16 , 17 ].

Middle managers (MMs) play a pivotal role in facilitating high quality care and may play a brokerage role in the sharing and use of knowledge in healthcare organizations [ 18 , 19 ]. MMs are managers at the mid-level of an organization supervised by senior managers, and who, in turn, supervise frontline clinicians [ 20 ]. MMs facilitate the integration of new knowledge in healthcare organizations by helping clinicians appreciate the rationale for organizational changes and translating adoption decisions into on-the-ground implementation strategies [ 18 , 19 ]. Current research suggests that MMs may play an essential role as internal KBs because of their mid-level positions in healthcare organizations. Some researchers have called for a deeper understanding of the MM role in knowledge brokering, including how MMs enact internal KB roles [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 21 ].

To this end, further research is needed on who assumes the KB role and what they do. Prior research suggests that KBs may function across five key roles: knowledge manager, linking agent, capacity builder, facilitator, and evaluator, but it is not clear whether these roles are realized in all healthcare settings [ 7 , 21 , 22 ]. KBs are often distinguished as external or internal to the practice community that they seek to influence, and most studies have focused on external KBs with comparatively little research focused on the role of internal KBs [ 7 , 9 , 17 , 23 , 24 ]. To address this gap, we will focus on internal KBs (MMs) who hold a pivotal position because their credibility and detailed knowledge of local context allows them to overcome the barriers common to external KBs. One such barrier is resistance to advice from external sources unfamiliar with the local context [ 25 ].

With respect to what KBs do, two studies explored KB roles and activities, and generated frameworks that describe KB functions, processes, and outcomes in health care [ 7 , 22 ]. However, these frameworks are not specific to MMs and are limited in detail about KB roles and functions. This knowledge is required by healthcare organizations to develop KB capacity among MMs, who can then enhance quality of care. Therefore, the focus of this study was to synthesize published research on factors that influence the KB roles, activities, and impact of MMs in healthcare settings. In doing so, we will identify key concepts, themes, and the relationships among them to generate an organizing framework that categorizes how MMs function as KBs in health care to guide future policy, practice, and research.

We used a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) to systematically review the complex body of literature on MM KBs. This included qualitative, quantitative, and theoretical papers. CIS offers an iterative, dynamic, recursive, and reflexive approach to qualitative synthesis. CIS was well-suited to review the MM KB literature than traditional systematic review methods because it integrates findings from diverse studies into a single, coherent framework based on new theoretical insights and interpretations [ 26 , 27 ]. A key feature that distinguishes CIS from other approaches to interpretive synthesis is the critical nature of the analysis that questions the way studies conceptualize and construct the topic under study and uses this as the basis for developing synthesizing arguments [ 26 ]. We ensured rigor by complying with the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) criteria (Additional file  1 ) and other criteria of trustworthiness [ 28 , 29 ]. We did not register a protocol for this review.

With a medical librarian, we developed a search strategy (Additional file  2 ) that complied with the evidence-based checklist for peer review of electronic search strategies [ 30 ]. We included Medical Subject Headings and keywords that captured the concepts of MMs (e.g., nurse administrator, manager), explicit or non-explicit KB roles (e.g., diffusion of innovation, dissemination, broker, and facilitator), evidence-based practice (e.g., knowledge, evidence) and setting (e.g., hospital, healthcare, or health care). We searched MEDLINE, CINAHL, Social Sciences Abstracts, ABI/INFORM, EMBASE, PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC, and the Cochrane Library from January 1, 2001, to August 14, 2020. We searched from 2001 onward because the field of KT did not substantially investigate KBs until 2001 [ 7 , 21 ]. We reviewed the reference lists of eligible articles for additional relevant studies not identified by searches. As is typical of CIS, this was an iterative process allowing search terms to be expanded to optimize search results [ 26 , 31 ].

Eligibility

We generated eligibility criteria based on the PICO framework (population, intervention, comparisons, and outcomes) (Additional file  3 ). Populations refer to MMs functioning as KBs in hospitals or other healthcare settings but did not necessarily use those labels. Because the MM literature is emergent, we included settings other than hospitals (e.g., public health department, Veteran Affairs Medical Centres). We included studies involving clinical and non-clinical administrators, managers, directors, or operational leaders if those studies met all other inclusion criteria. The intervention of interest was how MM KBs operated in practice for the creation, use and sharing of knowledge, implementation of evidence-based practice(s), or innovation implementation. Study comparisons may have evaluated one or more MM KB roles, approaches and associated barriers, enablers and impacts alone or in comparison with other types of approaches for the sharing or implementation of knowledge, evidence, evidence-based practices, or innovations. Outcomes included but were not limited to MM KB effectiveness (change in knowledge, skills, policies and/or practices, care delivery, satisfaction in role), behaviors, and outcomes. Searches were limited to English language quantitative, randomized, or pragmatic controlled trials, case studies, surveys, quasi-experimental, qualitative, or mixed methods studies and conceptual papers. Systematic reviews were not eligible, but we screened references for additional eligible primary studies. Publications in the form of editorials, abstracts, protocols, unpublished theses, conference proceedings were not eligible.

FB and ARG independently screened 50 titles and abstracts according to the eligibility criteria and compared and discussed results. Based on discrepancies, they modified the eligibility criteria and discussed how to apply them. Thereafter, FB screened all remaining titles, and discussed all uncertainties with ARG and the research team. FB retrieved all potentially eligible articles. FB and ARG independently screened a sample of 25 full-text articles, and again discussed selection discrepancies to further standardize how eligibility criteria were applied. Thereafter, FB screened all remaining full-text items.

Quality appraisal

We employed quality appraisal tools relevant to different research designs: Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) [ 32 ], the Good Reporting of a Mixed Methods Study (GRAMMS) tool [ 33 ], Critical Appraisal of a Questionnaire Study [ 34 ], Revised Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE 2.0) tool [ 35 ], and the Critical Appraisal Checklist for Quasi-Experimental Studies [ 36 ]. FB and ARG independently assessed and compared the quality of a sample of seven studies each. Thereafter, FB assessed the quality of the remaining 24 studies.

Data extraction

We developed a data extraction form to extract information on study characteristics (date of publication, country, purpose, research design) and MM KB characteristics, roles, activities, enablers, barriers, and impacts. To pilot test data extraction, FB and ARG independently extracted data from the same 25 articles, then compared results and discussed how to refine data extraction. Thereafter, FB extracted data from remaining articles, which was independently checked by ARG, and then reviewed by the research team.

Data analysis

FB and ARG conducted an initial reading and coding of a sample of articles independently. Codes were assigned to significant elements of data within the results and conclusions sections of the eligible articles and grouped into relevant categories with shared characteristics and organized into preliminary themes. This was an iterative process that involved ongoing consultation with the research team, who provided feedback on the codes and themes.

We created a matrix of MM KB roles and activities from extant MM and KB theory [ 7 , 18 , 22 , 37 ] and deductively mapped themes from included studies with the matrix to help inform the analysis and interpretation of our findings. As per CIS methodology, we developed an integrative grid (matrix table) where themes pertaining to MM KB roles and activities formed columns, and themes mapped to those roles/activities from individual studies formed rows [ 31 ]. The grid helped us integrate the evidence across studies and explore relationships between concepts and themes to inductively develop synthetic constructs [ 31 , 38 ]. Using a constant comparative approach, we critiqued the synthetic constructs with the full sample of papers to identify conceptual gaps in the available evidence in relation to our aims, and to ensure that the constructs were grounded in the data [ 31 , 38 ]. Our interpretive reflections on MM KB roles, activities, factors, and impacts led us to develop “synthetic arguments” and we used the arguments to structure our findings (attributes, roles, activities, impacts, enablers, barriers) in an organizing framework to capture our interpretation of how MMs function as KBs in healthcare organizations. We used NVivo 12 software to assist with data analysis.

Search results

The initial search yielded 9936 articles. Following removal of duplicates, 9760 titles were not eligible, and 176 items were retrieved as potentially relevant. Of those, 135 were excluded because the study design was ineligible (25), they did not examine MMs (27) or MM KBs (34), were not focused on the evaluation of an MM KB role (39), were editorials (4), or the publication was a duplicate (6). We included 41 articles for review (Fig.  1 PRISMA flow diagram). Additional file  4 includes all data extracted from included studies.

PRISMA flow diagram

Study characteristics

Eligible articles were published between 2003 and 2019. Three (7.3%) were conceptual and 38 (92.7%) were empirical studies. Conceptual articles discussed MM and KB theoretical constructs. Table  1 summarizes study characteristics. Studies examined the impacts of change efforts (47.3%), barriers to practice change (34.2%), and evaluation of KB interventions (18.4%). Most were qualitative (52.6%) and conducted in the United States (36.8%). Of study participants (34.2%) were MMs. In most studies, participants were nurses (63.1%) or allied health (13.2%) and based in hospitals (68.4%). Otherwise, (31.6%) were based in public health or occupational health departments, primary health care centers, Veterans Affairs Medical Centres, community care, and a senior’s care facility.

Quality assessment findings

A critical analysis of the included studies revealed issues related to research design, varying from data collected from heterogeneous healthcare settings and diverse types of MMs to the type of analyses completed (e.g., qualitative, mixed methods), to the strength of conclusions drawn from a few studies’ results (e.g., correlational, or causal). Fifteen (39.5%) studies met the criteria for quality. Twenty-three (60.5%) studies had minor methodological limitations (e.g., no research paradigm identified in qualitative studies, and mixed methods studies did not describe the integration of the two methods) (Additional file  5 ). These methodological flaws did not warrant exclusion of any studies as they provided relevant insights regarding the emerging framework.

MM KB attributes

Seven (18.4%) studies described MM KB attributes (Table  2 ). Of those, 4 (10.5%) identified MM attributes, 2 (5.2%) identified KB attributes, and 1 (2.6%) identified nurse knowledge broker attributes. MM KBs were described as confident, enthusiastic, and experienced with strong research skills [ 41 , 45 ]. They were also responsive and approachable, with an understanding of the complexity of an innovation and the organizational context [ 42 , 43 , 44 ].

MM KB roles and activities

Table  3 summarizes themes pertaining to roles and activities. A total of 63 activities were grouped in the following 12 MM KB roles: (1) gather data, (2) coordinate projects, (3) monitor and evaluate the progress of a project, (4) adjust implementation to organizational context, (5) disseminate information, (6) facilitate networks, (7) bridge the evidence-to-practice gap, (8) engage stakeholders, (9) convince others of the need for, and benefit of a project, (10) coach staff, (11) provide tools and resources and (12) function as a strategic influencer. Roles did not differ among MM KBs in hospital and non-hospital settings.

Table  4 summarizes the frequency of each of the 12 MM KB roles across included studies. The two most common MM KB roles were to monitor and evaluate the progress of a project (14, 36.8%) [ 40 , 41 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 54 , 57 , 60 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 ] and to convince others of the need for, and benefit of a project (12, 31.6%) [ 46 , 47 , 48 , 50 , 51 , 55 , 58 , 61 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ]. For example, MM KBs played an important role in monitoring the progress of projects to evaluate and reinforce practice change [ 41 , 50 ]. To convince others of the need for, and benefit of a project and to promote staff buy-in, they held ongoing conversations with staff to help them understand the rationale for change, reinforce the message, and encourage staff to consistently maintain the innovations on their units [ 46 , 48 , 66 ]. The least common MM KB role was project coordination (4, 10.5%) [ 39 , 47 , 48 , 56 ].

Several of the identified MM KB roles aligned with five KB roles in prior published frameworks [ 7 , 22 ] and MM role theory [ 18 , 37 ] (Table  5 ). For example, 31 (81.6%) studies described MM KB roles of gather data, project coordination, disseminate information , and adjust implementation to organizational context , which aligned with the roles and activities of a KB knowledge manager. Twenty-nine (76.3%) studies described the MM KB roles of provide tools and resources, convince others of the need for and benefit of a project, and coach staff , which aligned with the roles and activities of a KB capacity builder. We found overlap between the MM KB roles and the four hypothesized roles in MM role theory: (1) disseminate and obtain information, (2) adapt information and the innovations, (3) mediate between strategy and day to day activities, and (4) selling innovation implementation) [ 18 , 37 ]. For example, we found that as capacity builders, MM KBs also mediated between strategy and day-to-day activities such as coaching staff and providing resources, and in the role of knowledge manager, MM KBs obtained, diffused, and synthesized information [ 18 , 37 ].

While MM KB roles identified in included studies aligned with the five previously identified KB roles, the CIS approach we employed identified 12 distinct roles that were further characterized based on corresponding activities associated with each of the 12 roles. Therefore, while this research agrees with prior work on MM KB roles, it represents a robust framework of MM KB roles and activities by elaborating the complexity of MM KB roles and activities.

We fully described two roles compared with prior frameworks: to convince others of the need for and benefit of a project, and function as a strategic influencer. To convince others of the need for and benefit of a project (e.g., a quality improvement, best practice guideline implementation, or innovation), MM KBs used tactics such as role modelling their commitment, providing the rationale for the change, being enthusiastic about its adoption, offering positive reinforcement, and providing emotional support [ 47 , 50 , 58 ]. The role of strategic influencer featured in 7 (18.4%) studies [ 39 , 48 , 52 , 56 , 62 , 65 , 68 ]. For example, MM KBs were influential at the executive level of the hospital, advocating for innovations among less involved team members and administrators, including the hospital board, were members of organizational decision-making groups for strategic planning, and served as an authoritative contact for initiatives.

Factors that influence MMs knowledge brokering

Table  6 summarizes the enablers and barriers of MM KB roles and activities, organized as individual or organizational factors. We identified four enablers at the organizational level: senior management support, availability of resources, engaged staff, and alignment to strategy. The most common was senior management support, featured in 12 (32.0%) studies. We found that senior management support enhanced the commitment of MM KBs to innovation implementation [ 16 , 17 , 19 , 44 , 45 , 52 , 61 , 63 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ]. For example, senior managers empowered and supported MM KBs to make decisions by ensuring that the necessary structures and resources were in place, and by conveying that the implementation was an organizational priority [ 66 , 68 ]. We identified three individual-level facilitators: training and mentorship, personal attributes, and experience in the MM role. The most common facilitator was training and mentorship, featured in 8 (21.1%) studies. We found that training and mentorship with more experienced managers was important to the success of MM KBs and their projects, especially if they were new to their role [ 16 , 17 , 19 , 41 , 42 , 48 , 54 , 68 ].

Studies reported more barriers ( n  = 8) than enablers ( n  = 7). We found four organizational barriers: a lack of resources, lack of senior management support, staff resistance, and a lack of time. The most common barriers were lack of resources in 12 (32.0%) studies and lack of time in 12 (32.0%) studies. A lack of resources (budget constraints, limited staff) made it challenging for MM KBs to move their projects forward [ 39 , 42 , 44 , 47 , 52 , 55 , 57 , 64 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ]. For example, inadequate funds interfered with obtaining appropriate resources and undermined the feasibility of implementing projects [ 47 , 55 ]. In addition, staffing issues created difficulty in engaging staff in project work and low staffing levels limited capacity to provide desired standards of care [ 42 , 64 ]. Additionally, a lack of protected time for data collection or other project work was identified as a significant barrier to implementing projects [ 17 , 19 , 39 , 42 , 44 , 47 , 52 , 55 , 57 , 64 , 68 , 71 ]. MM KBs also lacked the time to nurture, support and adequately coach staff [ 39 , 55 ].

We identified four individual-level barriers: lack of formal training, dissatisfaction with work life balance, being caught in the middle, and professional boundaries. The most common barriers were lack of formal training (8, 21.1%) and dissatisfaction with work life balance (8, 21.1%). For example, a lack of formal training resulted in MM KBs being unprepared for managerial roles and without the knowledge and skills to promote effective knowledge brokering and knowledge transfer with end users [ 17 , 39 , 41 , 42 , 55 , 57 , 69 , 71 ]. We also found that heavy workloads and conflicting priorities left MM KBs often dissatisfied with their work life balance and hindered their ability to successfully complete projects [ 42 , 44 , 51 , 52 , 57 , 61 , 64 , 71 ]. For example, because of multiple responsibilities and conflicting priorities, MM KBs were often pulled away to address problems or were so absorbed by administrative tasks that they had no time to complete project responsibilities [ 44 , 64 ].

Impact on service delivery and outcomes

Eight (21.1%) studies showed that MM KBs had some impact on organizational and provider outcomes [ 16 , 40 , 43 , 44 , 47 , 56 , 62 , 67 ]. One (2.6%) study reported that practice changes were greater when associated with higher MM leadership scores (OR 1.92 to 6.78) and when MMs worked to help create and sustain practice changes [ 40 ]. One (2.6%) study reported the impact of senior managers’ implementation of an evidence-based Hospital Elder Life Program on administrative outcomes (e.g., reduced length of stay and cost per patient), clinical outcomes (e.g., decreased episodes of delirium and reduced falls), and provider outcomes (e.g., increased knowledge and satisfaction) [ 67 ].

Two (5.3%) studies reported the impact of a Clinical Nurse Leader role on care processes at the service level in American hospitals. Benefits were evident in administrative outcomes such as RN hours per patient day (increased from 3.76 to 4.07) and in reduced surgical cancellation rates from 30 to 14%. There were also significantly improved patient outcomes in dementia care, pressure ulcer prevention, as well as ventilator-assisted pneumonia [ 56 , 62 ]. One (2.6%) study reported financial savings [ 56 ].

Four (10.5%) studies reported the effect of a KB strategy on health professionals’ knowledge, skills, and practices [ 16 , 43 , 44 , 47 ]. For example, Traynor et al. [ 44 ] found that participants who worked closely with a KB showed a statistically significant increase in knowledge and skill (average increase of 2.8 points out of a possible 36 (95% CI 2.0 to 3.6, p  < 0.001) from baseline.

Organizing framework of MM KBs in healthcare organizations

We sought to capture the roles, activities, enablers, barriers and impacts of MM KBs across diverse healthcare settings in an organizing framework (Fig.  2 Organizing framework of MMs who function as knowledge brokers in healthcare organizations). From our interpretation of the published evidence, the findings across studies were categorized into 12 roles and 63 associated activities to represent specific ways in which MM KBs described their roles and activities during project implementation. Influencing factors were categorized into individual and organizational enablers and barriers that influence the efforts of MM KBs in healthcare organizations. While attributes were categorized as enablers, their level of importance as enablers emerged from our synthesis in how they operated in practice. The types of outcomes that we examined also varied between changes in care practice, processes, and competencies which we constructed into provider and organizational outcomes. Our emergent insights were used to construct four synthesizing arguments from the available literature: (1) MM KBs have attributes that equip and motivate them to implement practice change and innovations in healthcare organizations, (2) MMs enact KB roles and activities in healthcare organizations, (3) enablers and barriers influence the knowledge brokering efforts of MMs in healthcare settings; and (4) MM KB efforts impact healthcare service delivery. These synthesizing arguments were used to structure the organizing framework presented in Fig. 2 , which depicts how MM function as KBs in healthcare organizations and their impact on service delivery.

Organizing framework of MMs who function as knowledge brokers in healthcare organizations

We conducted a CIS to synthesize published research on factors that influence the roles, activities, and impacts of MM KBs in healthcare organizations. As per CIS, our output was an organizing framework (Fig. 2 ) that promotes expansive thinking about and extends knowledge of MM KBs in healthcare settings. We identified 63 activities organized within 12 distinct MM KB roles, which is far more comprehensive than any other study [ 7 , 22 ]. We build on prior frameworks and characterize further the roles of strategic influencer and convincing others of the need for, and benefit of an innovation or evidence-based practice. We identified organizational and individual enablers and barriers that may influence the efforts and impact of MM KBs in health care. Of note, a key enabler was senior leadership support while a key barrier for MM KBs was a lack of formal training in project implementation. Such factors should be closely considered when looking at how to strengthen the MM KB role in practice. Furthermore, we found that the MM KB role was associated with enhanced provider knowledge and skills, as well as improved clinical and organizational outcomes.

We offer a novel conceptualization of MM KBs in healthcare organizations that has, thus far, not been considered in the literature. Our theoretical insights (summarized in Fig. 2 ) are an important first step in understanding how individual and organizational factors may influence how MMs enact KB roles, and the impact they have on service delivery and associated outcomes. We found that the many MM KB roles and activities corresponded to the characterization of KB roles in the literature and substantiated MM role theory. Our findings corroborate previous studies and systematic reviews by confirming that MMs function as KBs and build on the MM and KB theoretical constructs previously identified in the literature [ 7 , 18 , 21 , 22 , 37 , 46 , 48 ]. Building on Birken and colleagues’ theory [ 37 ], we found significant overlap between MM and KB roles and activities. Figure  2 helps to define and analyze the intersection of these roles while distinguishing MM KB roles and activities more clearly from other administrative roles.

We contend that Fig. 2 has applicability across a range of healthcare settings and may be used by hospital administrators, policymakers, service providers, and researchers to plan projects and programs. It may be used as a resource in strategic planning, to re-structure clinical programs, build staff capacity, and optimize HR practices. For example, Fig. 2 could be used as a foundation to establish goals, objectives, or key performance indicators for a new or existing clinical program; refine job postings for MM roles to encompass optimal characteristics of candidates to enable KB activities; or identify new evaluation criteria for staff performance and training gaps in existing HR practices. It could also help decision makers take on pilot projects to formalize the KB role in healthcare.

Figure 2 is intended to foster further discussion of the role that MMs play in brokering knowledge in healthcare settings. It can be modified for specific applications, although we encourage retaining the basic structure (reflecting the synthesizing arguments). For example, the factors may change depending on specific localized healthcare contexts (i.e., acute care versus long-term care, or rehabilitation). Although the use of our framework in practice has yet to be evaluated, it may be strengthened with the results of additional mixed methods studies examining MM KBs as well as quasi-experimental studies applying adapted HR practices based upon our framework. As more studies are reported in the literature, the roles, activities, factors, and outcomes can be further refined, organized, and contextualized. Figure 2 can also be used as a guide for future studies examining how MMs enact the KB role across healthcare settings and systems, disciplines, and geographic locations.

Our synthesis provides new insights into the roles of MM KBs in healthcare settings. For example, we further elucidate two MM KB roles: 1) functioning as a strategic influencer; and 2) convincing others of the need for, and benefit of an innovation or evidence-based practice. These are important roles that MM KBs enact when preparing staff for implementation and corroborate Birken et al.’s hypothesized MM role of selling innovation implementation [ 18 , 37 ]. Our findings validate the organizational change literature that emphasizes the important information broker role MMs play in communicating with senior management and helping frontline staff achieve desired changes by bridging information gaps that might otherwise impede innovation implementation [ 37 ]. Our new conceptualization of how MM KBs navigate and enact their roles, and the impact they may have on service delivery and associated outcomes extends the findings of recent studies. These studies found that the role of MMs in organizational change is evolving and elements such as characteristics and context may influence their ability to facilitate organizational adaptation and lead the translation of new ideas [ 53 , 72 , 73 ]. However, further research is required to test and further explicate these relationships in the broader context of practice change.

Our synthesis both confirms and extends previous research by revealing organizational and individual factors that both enabled and hindered MM KBs efforts in healthcare organizations. An important organizational factor in our study was having senior management support. We found that MM KBs who had healthy supportive working relationships with their senior leaders led to project success. This support was critical because without it they experienced significant stress at being “caught in the middle” trying to address the needs of staff while also meeting the demands of senior management. Recent studies confirm our finding that senior management engagement is essential to MM KBs’ ability to implement innovations and underscores the need for senior leaders to be aware of, and acknowledge, the impact that excessive workload, competing demands, and role stress can play in their effectiveness [ 19 , 74 ].

The personal attributes of MM KBs as well as their level of experience were both important factors in how they operated in practice. We identified that key attributes of MM KBs contributed to their ability to drive implementation of initiatives and enhanced staff acceptance and motivation to implement practice change [ 75 , 76 ]. Our findings corroborate recent studies that highlight how the key attributes of effective champions (those that are intrinsic and cannot be taught) [ 77 , 78 , 79 ] may contribute to their ability to lead teams to successful implementation outcomes in healthcare organizations [ 80 , 81 , 82 ]. We also found that experienced MM KBs were well trained, knowledgeable, and better prepared to understand the practice context than novice MM KBs, but a lack of formal training in project implementation was an impediment for both. This emphasizes the importance of providing opportunities for professional development and training to prepare both novice and experienced MM KBs to successfully implement practice change. Our findings contribute to the growing knowledge base regarding what makes an effective MM KB. However, future research should focus on generating evidence, not only on the attributes of MM KBs, but also on how those attributes contribute to their organizational KB roles as well as the relationships among specific “attributes” and specific KB roles. More research is also needed to better understand how and what skills can be taught to boost the professional growth of MM KBs in health care.

Organizational theory and research may provide further insight into our findings and guidance for future research on the role of MM KBs in healthcare organizations. For example, the literature suggests that by increasing MMs’ appreciation of evidence-based practice, context, and implementation strategies may enhance their role in implementing evidence-based practices in healthcare organizations [ 18 , 83 , 84 ]. We found that MM KBs’ commitment to the implementation of an evidence-based project was influenced by the availability of resources, alignment with organizational priorities, a supportive staff and senior leadership. Extending from organizational theory and research, further investigation is needed to explore the nature of the relationship between these factors and the commitment of MM KBs to evidence-based practice implementation and subsequent outcomes.

When assessing the impact of MM KBs in hospitals, we found some evidence of changes in organizational and provider outcomes, suggesting MM KB impact on service delivery. Given that the available outcome data were limited, associational in nature, or poorly evaluated, it was challenging to identify strong thematic areas. Like our study, several systematic reviews also reported the lack of available outcome data [ 7 , 18 , 21 ]. This highlights an important area for research. Future research must include evaluation of the effectiveness of MM KBs and establish rigorous evidence of their impact on service delivery.

Our findings have important implications for policy and practice. MMs are an untapped KB resource who understand the challenges of implementing evidence-based practices in healthcare organizations. Both policy makers and administrators need to consider the preparation and training of MM KBs. As with other studies, our study found that providing MM KBs with opportunities for training and development may yield a substantial return on investment in terms of narrowing evidence-to-practice gaps in health care [ 48 ]. Thus, an argument can be made for recruiting and training MM KBs in health care. However, the lack of guidance on how to identify, determine and develop a curriculum to prepare MM KBs requires more research.

Our synthesis revealed numerous activities associated with 12 MM KB roles providing further insight into the MM role in healthcare settings. Our list of 63 activities (Table 2 ) has implications for practice. We found that MMs enact numerous KB roles and activities, in addition to their day-to day operational responsibilities, highlighting the complexity of the MM KB role. Senior leaders and administrators must acknowledge this complexity. A greater understanding of these KB roles and activities may lead to MM implementation effectiveness, to sustainable MM staffing models, and to organizational structures to support the KB efforts that many MMs are already doing informally. For example, senior leaders and administrators need to take the MM KB role seriously and explicitly include KB activities as a core function of existing MM job descriptions. To date, the KB role and associated activities are not typically or explicitly written into the formal job descriptions for MMs in healthcare settings, as their focus is primarily on operational responsibilities. A formal job description for MM KBs would improve the KB capacity of MMs by giving them the permission and recognition to implement KB-related functions. Our findings inform future research by more clearly articulating the MM KB roles and activities that may be essential to the implementation of evidence-based practice and highlights a much-needed area for future work.

Our study features both strengths and weaknesses. One strength in using CIS methodology was the ability to cast a wide net representing a range of research designs of included studies. This included studies in which MMs were required to be KBs by senior leaders or functioned explicitly as KBs. This enabled us to identify and include diverse studies that made valuable theoretical contributions to the development of an emerging framework, which goes beyond the extant theories summarized in the literature to date [ 18 ]. In contrast to prior systematic reviews of MM roles in implementing innovations [ 18 ], the CIS approach is both systematic and iterative with an interpretive approach to analysis and synthesis that allowed us to capture and critically analyze an in-depth depiction of how MMs may enact the KB role in healthcare organizations. Our synthesis also revealed numerous activities associated with the 12 identified MM KB roles. The resulting theoretical insights were merged into a new organizing framework (Fig. 2 ). These insights are an important first step in understanding how individual and organizational factors may influence how MMs enact KB roles, and the impact they have on service delivery.

Although CIS is an innovative method of synthesizing the literature and continues to evolve, it does have limitations. CIS has yet to be rigorously evaluated [ 85 , 86 ]. While there is some precedent guiding the steps to conduct a CIS, one weakness is that CIS is difficult to operationalize. Another weakness is that the steps to conduct CIS reviews are still being refined and can lack transparency. Therefore, we used standardized, evidence-based checklists and reporting tools to assess transparency and methodological quality, and an established methodology for coding and synthesis. We provided an audit trail of the interpretive process in line with the ENTREQ guidance. Still, there was a risk of methodological bias [ 28 , 85 , 86 ]. Another weakness of qualitative synthesis is its inability to access first order constructs that is the full set of participants’ accounts in each study. As reviewers, we can only work with the data provided in the papers and, therefore, the findings of any review cannot assess primary datasets [ 31 ]. Study retrieval was limited to journals that are indexed in the databases that were searched. We did not search the grey literature, assuming that most empirical research on MM KBs would be found in the indexed databases. Finally, we may have synthesized too small a sample of papers to draw definitive conclusions regarding different aspects of MMs as KBs.

Our study is a first step in advancing the theoretical and conceptual conversation regarding MM KBs by articulating the attributes, roles, activities, and factors influencing their efforts and impact. Through the generation of a novel organizing framework, we identify a potential combination of roles for those in MM positions who may also function as KBs in healthcare organizations. Our study is a timely contribution to the literature and offers an initial understanding of extant evidence of the KB role MMs play in health care. Our framework has utility for policymakers, administrators, and researchers to strengthen the MM role and, ultimately, improve quality of care.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Abbreviations

Middle Manager

Knowledge Broker

Middle managers who function as Knowledge brokers

Knowledge Translation

Critical Interpretive Synthesis

Quality Improvement

Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research

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ENTREQ checklist

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Search strategy

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Quality appraisal tools and findings

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Boutcher, F., Berta, W., Urquhart, R. et al. The roles, activities and impacts of middle managers who function as knowledge brokers to improve care delivery and outcomes in healthcare organizations: a critical interpretive synthesis. BMC Health Serv Res 22 , 11 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-07387-z

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