Premium
OUTLIERS, CHEESE, AND RHIZOMES: VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LIMITATION
Author(s) -
Stone Lynda
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2011.00426.x
Subject(s) - epistemology , outlier , theme (computing) , sociology , field (mathematics) , miller , domain (mathematical analysis) , philosophy , social science , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , ecology , mathematical analysis , pure mathematics , biology , operating system
All research has limitations, for example, from paradigm, concept, theory, tradition, and discipline. In this article Lynda Stone describes three exemplars that are variations on limitation and are “extraordinary” in that they change what constitutes future research in each domain. Malcolm Gladwell's present day study of outliers makes a statistical term into a sociological concept. Carlo Ginzburg's study of a sixteenth‐century miller who challenges Church doctrine initiates the field of microhistory. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's philosophy of the rhizome offers a poststructuralist study of the doing of philosophy and the form of philosophical text. Although Gladwell's study is the only one specifically on the topic of outliers, the other two investigations are outliers as well. Overall the three studies demonstrate what can be revealed and learned when limitation is transgressed. This is an important lesson for educational research—wherein heretofore unimagined societal possibility and reform of education might result.