What is meta-theory in philosophy?
A metatheory or meta-theory is a theory whose subject matter is itself a theory. A metatheory is not applied directly to practice, but may have applications to the practice of the field it studies. The emerging field of metascience seeks to use scientific knowledge to improve the practice of science itself.
What is metatheory in psychology?
n. a higher order theory about theories, allowing one to analyze, compare, and evaluate competing bodies of ideas. The concept of a metatheory suggests that theories derive from other theories, so that there are always prior theoretical assumptions and commitments behind any theoretical formulation.
What is metatheory in communication?
Metatheory is theory about theory. The purpose of metatheory is to explicitly articulate and critique the metatheoretical assumptions that underlie theories and to articulate normative metatheoretical principles to guide the creation and assessment of theories. Metatheory addresses questions such as what is theory.
What are Metatheoretical assumptions?
They are more or less conscious or unconscious assumptions behind theoretical, empirical and practical work. Metatheoretical assumptions are connected to philosophical views, and are often part of interdisciplinary trends, which again can be connected to the Zeitgeist (Hjørland 1998:607).
What is political metatheory?
Drawn from the philosophy of science, metatheory is generally defined in International Relations (IR) as ‘theorizing about theory’ by examining a theory’s ontology or epistemology.
What is mechanistic metatheory?
Mechanistic meta-theories can be understood using the metaphor of a machine. It is as if humans are composed and change the same way as machines. The underlying hypothesized cause of development in Mechanistic meta-theories is social conditioning that occurs over time, leading to changes in observable behavior.
What is an example of metatheory?
The most notable example of a metatheory was provided by David Hilbert, a German mathematician, who in 1905 set out to construct an elementary proof of the consistency of mathematics. For this purpose he needed a theory that studies mathematics and has mathematical proofs as the objects to be investigated.
What is an example of a metatheory?