It took me awhile to wrap my head
around the idea of strategic contemplation. It's a completely new (or
at least a new take) as research method for me. Whenever I think
research, I usually think it on the science side—hard data based on
experiments based on previous data from previous experiments, and so
on. That said, within any research there has to be a synthesis of the
findings, extrapolations of what its impact could be or how it will
contribute to the field of study. Strategic contemplation seems to
take this synthesis just one step further.
My next argument was going to be that
both critical imagination and strategic contemplation are completely
based on inference, and therefore mean less than the 'facts'. But any
study is inference—we think we have it figured out, and then we are
proved wrong. This is true in any (academic or not) field. I think
this is where the strength of strategic contemplation and critical
imagination lies—the strategies accept that there are no
set-in-stone facts, and that study is an ever evolving and changing
activity. And by accepting that condition, they open the field to
literally anything, which has to help whatever it is you are
studying. You let go of any conditions, preconceptions, or hopes you
have of specific finding or outcome, and see what comes up. That
approach seems like it could turn up some pretty interesting results.
When you say that strategic contemplation and critical imagination open up the field for literally anything, I wonder if you lose critical imagination when you let go of conditions, perceptions, or hopes. When I am writing I imagine the conditions to start mapping out my paper, then I think of my audience and then imagine the perception they might have. After doing this I then research I thinking what articles and books would impress. I can see how this can be a problem when you are getting down to the fact. In field of rhetoric I can see how strategic contemplation is the best way to research. But I would argue that researching a paper for rhetoric is far different then researching a speech. I guess this is just something to think about.
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