When our mind is restive, good reasoning helps us remain peaceful and take the right decision, and bad reasoning makes us more unruly and take the wrong decision. As stated by Kenneth E. Hagin, “Feeling is the voice of the body; reasoning is the voice of the mind; conscience is the voice of the spirit.” Reasoning is an inherent process of using existing knowledge to conclude, make predictions, or construct explanations for research. We human beings have Critical Reflection on Reasoning in Research and Realityrecourses to reasoning to obtain reliable knowledge. From the dawn of human civilisation on the basis of life experiences, teachings from authority, influences from customs, traditions and socialising agents like educational institutions, human beings have started generating knowledge or discovering truth mostly by the use of deductive and inductive reasoning. Even, in conducting research these deductive and inductive reasoning are also very important. Deductive reasoning can be considered as a thinking process in which one proceeds from general to specific statements through logical arguments. Deductive reasoning begins with a theory, supports it with observation and eventually arrives at a confirmation. On the other hand, inductive reasoning can be considered as a thinking process where reasoning begins with an observation and arrives at a hypothesis or theory. Deductive reasoning is based on syllogism, which was the great contribution of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, to formal logic. In its simplest form, the syllogism consists of a major premise based on a priori or self-evident proposition, a minor premise providing a particular instance, and a conclusion. To use a simple example, consider the following proposition:

All planets orbit the sun (Major premise)

The earth is a planet (Minor premise)

Therefore, the Earth orbits the sun (Conclusion).

The assumption underlying the syllogism is that through a sequence of formal steps of logic, from the general to the particular, a valid conclusion can be deduced from a valid premise.

In personal and professional life we very often use deductive logic in solving problems. Lawyers, doctors, soldiers and detectives often resort to deductive arguments in their professional work. Researchers may use deductive reasoning to carry out certain tasks of their research work. Without deduction, facts obtained through observation and experiment would be fruitless since one could not fit them into deductive systems called sciences. Nothing is beyond limitations. Deductive reasoning has some limitations. The conclusion we get from Deductive reasoning depends upon pre-existing knowledge and it does not enable scholars to gain new knowledge or to make discoveries. Rather deductive reasoning stresses the forms of argument and not the truth or falsity of the statements. According to the deductive mode of reasoning if the form of argument is sound, then even a false premise will not matter. However, there is no way to claim that deductive reasoning has no role in the knowledge-generation process. Rather it has its use in formulating and proposing hypotheses from the general truth (theory) which in turn helps knowledge generation through inquiry by the use of hypothesising. Deductive reasoning can systematise what is already known and can identify new relationships as one proceeds from known to unknown, but it cannot be relied upon as a self-sufficient method for securing reliable knowledge. Inductive reasoning has been devised to complement deductive reasoning as a means of searching for knowledge. In the early 1600s, Francis Bacon introduced the mode of inductive reasoning. He felt strongly that the deductive mode of reasoning could never suffice for the discovery of truth because it started with a preconceived notion and, therefore, biased the results obtained. He declared that if one collects enough data without any preconceived idea about their significance and orientation and maintains complete objectivity about their significance and orientation, it is most likely that an inherent relationship would emerge. There may be two forms of induction— perfect and imperfect.

As a bottom-up approach, inductive reasoning also has some inherent limitations. Its basic limitation is that it can be applied to only as many events as can be observed, and hence the conclusions arrived at cannot be infallible. However, the conclusions reached by imperfect inductive reasoning do contain information that is not present, even implicitly, in one of the premises (the observed instances). If all the premises are true, the probability of conclusions arrived at may be of varying degrees. Suppose we have noticed that every time we eat hot spicy food, we feel stomach aches and indigestion. So, we might use inductive reasoning to conclude that spicy food always causes stomach aches and indigestion. But this may not be true for other people.

Actually, in research and reality, we need to know the process of good reasoning. Both deductive and inductive reasoning are good and important for conducting research. The researcher may choose any of these depending on the types of research methods and topics.

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The writer is a Professor (English) at Institute of Modern Languages of Jagannath University