Request for assistance - academic definition

[Walsingham]

What's the technical term for your basic academic waffle-fest? You know, when you talk around the houses, look at both sides and conclude "it depends" like a total c***?

 

In other news, I get really cranky when running a fever.

[Nonek]

Discourse?

[Tel Aviv]

Waffle-fest? I love waffles!

[Zoraptor]

Belgian waffle fests are better than Academic waffle fests, certainly.

 

On the original it would depend on the context. Treatise, examination, hypothesis, mental experiment, discourse, debate all would fit depending on the circumstance. If it's a formal group presentation it would be a conference, if it's a formal publication it would be, well, a publication/ article.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Zoraptor

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Wals, I honestly have no idea what the **** you are asking about.

[Walsingham]

I mean the academically prized notion of a learned paper looking at both sides of a subject through loose discourse summarising with a "well we've looked at both sides and aren't we clever". I know philosophy, and probably Greek philosophy, must have come upw ith a word for it. Otherwise I wouldn't have been taught it in school.

 

I say 'taught'. Obviously this would have been as a teenager so I was too busy scheming access to boobs to listen to ancient Greek.

 

I love being this ill. It's like being drunk without the social conscience.

[Gorgon]

Why don't you make one up. Seems like there is a demand.

[Gorth]

It's like when I have to decide on a glass of Cognac. One one hand, it tastes good, it makes me feel good, it is good. On the other hand, it's alcohol and intake should be limited, it's expensive, so resources are taken from elsewhere and so it is bad.

 

There, covered both sides, ain't I clever? Now hand me the Cognac glass...

[Orogun01]

I mean the academically prized notion of a learned paper looking at both sides of a subject through loose discourse summarising with a "well we've looked at both sides and aren't we clever". I know philosophy, and probably Greek philosophy, must have come upw ith a word for it. Otherwise I wouldn't have been taught it in school.

 

I say 'taught'. Obviously this would have been as a teenager so I was too busy scheming access to boobs to listen to ancient Greek.

 

I love being this ill. It's like being drunk without the social conscience.

We call them blogs.

[Darth InSidious]

I mean the academically prized notion of a learned paper looking at both sides of a subject through loose discourse summarising with a "well we've looked at both sides and aren't we clever". I know philosophy, and probably Greek philosophy, must have come upw ith a word for it. Otherwise I wouldn't have been taught it in school.

 

I say 'taught'. Obviously this would have been as a teenager so I was too busy scheming access to boobs to listen to ancient Greek.

 

I love being this ill. It's like being drunk without the social conscience.

Dialectic?

[Tigranes]

Dialectic is not quite suitable for the purpose Wals is describing - I assume he's talking about a standard 'here, I'm clearly on the side of Chardonnay but I've also considered the possibility that Bourbon is superior, aren't I impartial and smart and reasonable" move in academia, journalism, etc. Neither the Socratic dialogue nor Hegelian dialectic would really work. 

 

In fact, it's surprising how we don't really have a word for it as far as I know, given we repeat "consider both sides of the argument" about a billion times a day around the world.

[Walsingham]

I was thinking dialectic as well, but I think that's more of a rationalist approach to deriving truth.

 

I agree with Tigs in that 'we' as a culture probably use it as the basis for a huge percentage of academic achievement, and thereby social advancement, yet we don't seem to have a word for it.

[Nepenthe]

I dunno, dialectic in the more classical sense seems a pretty good fit to me.

[Walsingham]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

 

 

Well, wiki agrees with Nep.