Introduction

This book is about going beyond dichotomy. The research literature in social sciences is full of apparent dichotomies, such as the dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative approaches; “reality” and “multiple-realities”; ontology and epistemology; researchers and participants; the right and wrong conduct of research; and sometimes even between the goals of research and the ethics of research. Throughout the book, we have endeavored to show that adopting a dialectical approach, which attempts to integrate apparent contradictions and opposites at a higher level of abstraction, may serve as a way out of the twin horns of such dilemmas. To begin this journey, we will start with the classical dilemma of the relationship between “reality“ and “knowledge” as a common divide between the quantitative and qualitative epistemological paradigms (Lincoln & Guba, 2013) and the philosophical assumptions underlying them. To illustrate our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and reality, we use the metaphor of “maps and territories“ (Korzybski, 1933) as a framework for the dialectical construction of knowledge.