Is it possible to conduct a full, unbiased and unambiguous study of a topic when the resolution of scientific and/or technological uncertainty is not a research objective?

There are many examples in humanities and the arts where something similar to scientific method (i.e. collection and grading of evidence, attempts to theorize and draw conclusions from it) is habitually used to answer a variety questions. Thus, while such research, does involve attempts to resolve uncertainty on the topics under investigation, these topics are not on the subjects addressed by the natural/social sciences or engineering, while the attempts to resolve uncertainty in these topics, don’t utilize any knowledge from the natural/social sciences or engineering.

Also, research in a number of fields outside of natural/social sciences and engineering, has long been producing results, which are superior in their objectivity and certainty to anything produced by the natural/social sciences or engineering. In particular, derivation of a logically valid proof to any theorem in mathematics (or more broadly, in any system of formal logic), guarantees that this theorem is true in all the cases that it claims to address and that it will always be true. By contrast, scientific theories and empirical research results are frequently discarded, or at least modified, in response to new empirical evidence or development of more sophisticated theories with greater explanatory/predictive power.

However, it is important to keep in mind that research projects in many subfields of humanities and the arts never try to “conduct a full, unbiased and unambiguous study” in the first place; if only because the subject matter under investigation is open to a wide variety of interpretation; preventing which would only move us further away from, albeit unreachable, objectivity (since many perspectives would be deliberately neglected).

Moreover, there is an influential body of thought, which argues that artistic research is a unique method of research. And while attempts to outline it are rather complex; it is clear that according to its proponents, artistic practice (i.e. the creation of art itself) is an integral part of artistic research (Borgdorff, 2012, pp. 140 – 173). However, given that all other (“non-art”) academics generally find the concept of artistic research distasteful and confusing, attempts, to describe artistic research as something a lot like scientific research, have been made (Borgdorff, 2012, pp. 56 – 103). In fact, according to Lesage (2009), even artistic practice “can be described in a way more or less analogous to scientific research” (p. 5). Thus, an artistic project, “begins with the formulation, in a certain context, of an artistic problem” (p. 5). This leads to “an investigation, both artistic and topical, into a certain problematic, which may or may not lead to an artwork, intervention, performance or statement” (Lesage, 2009, p. 5). However, if the investigation does lead to “an artwork, intervention, performance or statement,” the artist uses it as a new reference point for looking at the initial artistic problem and its context (Lesage, 2009, p. 5).

References

Borgdorff, H. (2012). The conflict of the faculties: Perspectives on artistic research and academia. Leiden, NL: Leiden University Press. Retrieved from https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/21413/file444584.pdf?sequence=1

Lesage, D. (2009). Who’s afraid of artistic research? On measuring artistic research output. ART&RESEARCH: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, 2(2). Retrieved from http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v2n2/pdfs/lesage.pdf