My friend recently has written about keeping life on an auto-pilot, and that was well-timed so far as my reading goes. There are several ways that I could take to bring myself back into a self-control mode, but all those ways look equally vague and perhaps very little attracting. That, you could argue, is again an effect of the auto-pilot system.

To feel better, I chose to recall a few things good about myself. First, I really gave up on tea/coffee, so successfully keeping to my new year resolution. Second, I love running, and I am doing it almost regularly. Third, I like to live through books, and I picked up a couple of rejuvenating books from my old professor friend, and read them up. Fourth, there were occasions when people had things to say, and I had actions to respond. That last one especially makes me feel resilient. But none of them still gives me the feeling that I am searching for.

This empty space is, I guess, because of the long held desire to become a writer that people read. After all, writing is for readership, isn’t it? What this thought can trigger are many different starts of an idea that could go on to be a long story, but I cut them short since I do not know if it is so good having so many possible starts. I am perplexed and am stuck not knowing whether my method is beginning to consume me. Or should I be worried about the method at all? Sometimes I almost begin writing a story, “And he died. —“, that could probably become a good suspense-thriller, but I am not interested in developing an idea that has such an extreme beginning. On other occasions, I pen down a line, “There she was.—“, and then I recall all those love stories and begin wondering if there aren’t already enough love stories around. And then on those moments when endorphin kicks in, I begin writing, “I thought on that long night…“, and then I check if I am getting a little too lost with how fascinating my life is. There are several others I do not mention here, because I am afraid that all those starters might be stolen (they are intellectual property of the dreamer in me, after all!).

Is that a problem that every writer has gone through? If yes, then it is good, because probably I am on the way to becoming one. If no, then even better, because I am richer by experiencing such a range of feelings before I began writing. Is there then a cause for concern? I believe yes, because I do not know when I can officially start.

And hence I wonder, “How do I start?“

Oops, by the way, have I given away my best starter? Or was it the end!

Two kids, a boy and a girl, in that family were doing different things. The boy was watching IPL supporting his favorite franchise. He is about ten years old. The girl was fighting her father saying that she does not want to go out. The fight was resolved soon as I intervened to keep the girl engaged. I love the cuteness with which she plays those little board games. The last time I remember, we played snakes and ladders. That time I won the game, and she won my heart. The grace with which she went on to congratulate and smile to me, aah! I don’t think many kids today are nurtured to treat win and loss the same way. But probably she was.

I proposed to her that we play the same game again. She was happy to respond and immediately brought the set of board games that she had. The board had snakes and ladders on one-side, and a business-like game on the other side. She brought some fake money and some cards that, may be, are needed to play that business-like game. The moment she arrived, I saw that my wife was excited to join in, and the boy who was watching IPL jumped in too! These unexpected arrivals to the game somehow managed to suppress my intention of really playing the game; because, to me, two are friends and three is crowd.  So, I picked up a weekly and started flipping pages to find something that might catch my attention.

The girl forcibly made me sit and play the game with everyone. And I was playing with my hands throwing dice and asking my wife move my coins. The girl is, I bet, very clear on what she wanted. She demanded that I keep the ‘book’ away and really play the game. She also demanded that I must move my coins. I was very uninterested but was clever enough to act weak. She was cleverer to take away the book and make some space for me to sit right opposite her in the game. With kids, reasons fall apart too quickly! I obliged her command. So, of the four of us playing the game, including the girl, the boy, my wife and myself, the girl decided that she would take on a dual role: that of of the player and that of the banker.

She started distributing the fake money and the boy jumped on the currency to make the distribution faster. The girl stopped him saying that she is the banker and distribution was her job. She is around eight years old. Her seriousness in playing the game was a dose of humor that would evoke smiles on even the stone-hearted. The boy moaned about the girl delaying the game. I could understand his anxiety to get started. I could also see the girl’s intent to keep the game intact (literally) according to the rules that she had learnt.

Through the game, the girl realized that she might be losing it because everyone else had taken larger strides (big dice numbers by luck) and are heading to the finish block. I was hoping that I would at least stop myself from reaching to the final position before her. I really wanted to control the number on the dice, but I couldn’t except for some happy moments (blocks) that I occupied where the game rule said “Six to move”. Players keep making money or losing money through the tracks. The boy was making more money than others and he was happy about it. It was just natural. Games are, after all, played to be won, I think. Few blocks away from the finish point, the boy was in a hurry to get done with. He was still concerned about the others having the chances of making more money.

After a few moments I observed that the boy’s attitude to the game was completely in contrast to the girl’s. In fact, each player had a different objective in playing the game. The boy was wanting to win, and the girl was just wanting to play. My wife wanted to be with me (or keep me with her). And I wanted to keep the little girl happy. As I write this, I feel funny that not too long ago I taught game theory and rational decision-making.

The boy finally won the game. He reached the finish point first. Now, he was waiting for others to finish the game to decide their relative positions. The girl was still lagging behind, only in the game though and not in her curiosity on how it is going. After a while, the boy felt irked about how long it is taking for the game to finish, because the IPL break in which he joined the game was getting over. He wanted to leave the game dead-sure that he won, so that he could go back and enjoy watching his team on TV. So, he tried to take on the role of the banker to manage exchange and denominations. The girl was very upset about it. Whenever he intruded trying to make the game move faster, the girl stopped him and asked him to let her do it. He tried teaching things, and the girl chose to try and fail rather than be taught by him.

Now that I have the time to think back on what was happening between the boy and the girl, I have two lines of thought that intrigue me. If I allowed the boy to intervene in the game, the game would have got over quicker and the result would have been out faster. But is that what I wanted? Or should that be the objective for anybody in this situation? If I ask him to stay out of the game because his part is over, was I killing his initiative to make things better? If I asked him to not intervene, would I have been helping the girl to learn things by doing?

My rational mind throws up several interesting questions about what I could have done or what should have happened. But my heart just yells, “Let her do it”.

And by the way, I caught my train in time.

So, what we might do to arrive at a slightly improved definition is–breakdown the word ‘phenomena’ into smaller fragments. Phenomena should essentially have a ‘trigger point’ or ‘input’, and a ‘termination point’ or ‘outcome’, and something happens in between. In research terms, they call the ‘trigger’ or ‘input’ as ’cause’, and the ‘termination’ or ‘outcome’ as ‘effect’. Together, in social sciences research, they are also called ‘variables’, because they are continuously changing . The observer who is intending to develop a theory has to carefully look for these points. What happens in between them is the ‘process’; but again, in research terms, they call it ‘interaction’.

Take for example this article on scientific american which claims that consuming chocolate might improve eye sight. The phenomena scientists (observers) found here was that ‘what we eat’ (input/trigger/cause) can influence ‘what happens to our eye sight’ (outcome/termination/effect). If you think carefully, it is not hard to realize that ‘what we eat’ is a ‘variable’, because we eat lots of things (a range of foods: unpredictable); and ‘what happens to our eye sight’ is also a ‘variable’, because it can get better or worse (unpredictable); and then lastly, somehow, the scientists figured out that ‘eating chocolate’ and ‘eye sight’ have some ‘interaction’ between them that leads to ‘improvement in eyesight’.

Now, here is the question for the day: Is that a good theory? If so, how do you know?

There were several things that debated (still are) about what makes a good theory. I was reading a scholarly publication on what makes a good theory, and it took me a day to understand some eight things they mentioned. But I realized that a good theory is one that is convincing, and stated simple.

So here is my little attempt to give you what I understand.

First things first. There has to be a description about how the stated phenomena was observed. After all, the observations cannot be too casual. There has to be a method to observing. For example, it may not be great to say, ‘I have a couple of friends who told me that their eye sight improved after eating chocolate’, or ‘I tried it on me and it worked’. Those statements are what you might often hear from celebrities in advertisements, but it would be dumb to imagine that they were really serious observations. By experience, I found that in good theories, the motivation to observe the stated phenomena precedes the method of observing. Also, the method is carefully designed to appeal to common sense. They call it ‘research methodology’ or ‘research design’, but you will find it sometime soon that it is not so hard to digest.

Second, there has to be a fair description of what exactly is being observed, and what is being looked for. Observation does not just mean you keep staring at something till one day there might be an enlightenment. Instead, there is learning in the process of observing. And, the first observation may not be the same as the last observation. So, it is imperative that the observer mentions what he has found at each step. Whether the theory being stated is logical or not can be made out from the amount of detail in this part. I can tell you, this is like your grad school lab work (if you have been in a mechanical engineering laboratory, you know how many times you switched the power buttons on and off, and recorded whatever the assistant told you ).

Up to this point, it appears easy and smooth. That was all describing the phenomena! But here we go, where we talk about explaining–and here is where you need your own set of ideas (perspectives).

Now that you are already motivated to observe a phenomena, ready with a method to observe, and probably observed and recorded also; the question is about ‘how do you explain what you saw/found?’. Like in our chocolate example, the question is ‘how do the scientists know that eating chocolate improves eye sight?’. You could be sucked into stating the obvious here. i.e., ‘haven’t I observed and recorded the phenomena already, just for this?’. But that is not an explanation! Think again. A set of observations are still observations alone. Instead, a good theory can answer the question ‘why something is happening the way it is’. This part requires imagination, in-depth study, and some times a bit of luck too!

Gravitation is a popular example. The credit for this theory goes to Newton; but have you ever thought why nobody else had the question that Newton had–’why doesn’t an apply fly?’. It would be foolish to believe that Newton was the first to get such a question. There were ages of men who might have thought about it. If you were to ask the human being who first walked on the planet if he had a theory to explain why the apple never flew, he might tell you, ‘that is by god’s design’. That isn’t a bad theory, but for the time we are in, we are aware of what Newton said, ‘that there is gravitational force–earth is like a giant magnet and pulls us towards it’. What I want you to observe here is that imagination of two different people leads to two different explanations. Are they both right? Are they both wrong? May be Yes, May be No. There are several factors that influence the validity of a theory, but we will talk about validity in another article. For now, let us conclude this section here by understanding the need for luck such as apple hitting Newton’s temple.

For a moment, let us get back to our question: what makes a good theory? By now, we understand that a good theory should have good description and reasonable explanation. But is that it? Or is there something more? All I have written so far still sounds too mundane. And you could come out with a theory that says, ‘when you read an article 1500 words long, you get bored’. But that is stating the obvious (or is it!?).

So, here is the real deal. A good theory should have two properties. First, it should state something new–it could just be a small finding, large finding, revolutionary finding, anything goes but newness is necessary. Second, it should be useful–bringing findings that help make predictions, that can lead to actionable items, that are directly useful to a section of the society.

When theories are made just for the heck of making theories, the process remains mundane and the art of building theories becomes lifeless. But when theories are tied to these two factors, that is to bring in some contribution that was not already known, and become useful, theory building becomes exciting. After all, we make theories for others to appreciate and accept. The objective has to be to make the life easy for the audience to our theory.

In even simpler terms, a theory that feeds into practice is a good theory.

Now, stretch your mind and try to think of occasions when you heard or said, “Wow! What I read in the book is what I see out here”, or “Oh my god! Psychology is just not all crap”, or “Amazing! You predicted Obama might win again, and he did”. In my theory, it is difficult to recall these positive statements, unless you are superstitious to an extent.

But all these statements actually underline the relationship between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. There is a proverb here that says, “those who can’t do, teach”. This post is a little food-for-thought to the readers who might believe in this proverb or take a similar stance in their life.  Think about it again, pals!

Let us keep the proverb aside for a while. We will talk about how right or wrong it is in the conclusion of this post. For now, I would try to reasonably argue that theory and practice are two things that coexist and feed into each other.

Theory and practice have different objectives, but they are bound together by phenomena they deal with.

Let us see how ‘theory’ can be defined:

Theory is any systematically related set of ideas used to describe and/or explain a phenomena.

That definition clarifies a thing or two about what exactly theory is, who makes it, and how it is made up. First, it is a ‘systematically related set of ideas’. Second, the objective of a theory is to ‘describe and/or explain’ a phenomena. Now, what is phenomena? Phenomena is a series of actions which are logically connected to bring an outcome. Take for example, you bought a samsung galaxy tab at INR 20000 a week back, and now, the company brings down the price to INR 12000, and you feel you made a loss. Here, the actions are (1) you bought a tab @ market price, and (2) market price goes down after a week, and the outcome is (3) you feel you made a loss. If you understand the phenomena, proceed to understand the theory here, “when the market price of a product one buys goes down in such short time, one would feel at loss”. And then try to think about who made this theory…it is obviously ‘me’. And how did I make it up? Just by observing what my young friend was going through.

So, theories are made by individuals who observe phenomena and try to describe and/or explain what is happening. So far as the theory sounds logical, and so far as it reflects in our common experience, you and I will agree this (or any other) theory. But the problem is when I am the observer who made up the theory, and it does not fit into our common experience. That is when one might argue that the theory is invalid (most say ‘useless’). On careful observation, you may be able to find that theory comes with a set of assumptions that may not reflect in our common experience that make the theory vulnerable to failure. Here, I agree that ‘theories can fail’. But there is more to it than such oversimplification. Think again!

Successfully applying theory as-it-is in practice needs (1) good understanding of the assumptions behind the theory, (2) the context in which it was developed, and (3) an ability to decide if it is the right theory to apply. So, if the theory does not fit into our common experience and we blame theory, there is a possibility that we did not get one of these three things right. Either we did not perform a careful scrutiny of the assumptions and the context, or we did not think at all. But that is fine! We are not expected to analyze theories for their validity before we ‘do’ anything. We are doers, and we just do! Wait, but…don’t you ‘think’ before you do? And aren’t you operating on some assumptions too?

Those who make a million bucks don’t delay getting into training others to make a million bucks. An interesting question to ask here would be, ‘how many of those trained are earning a million bucks?”. I leave the answer to you, but for sure, the trainer is making more money. After all, training isn’t for free; it just sums up practice and mulls out theories.

Let us come back and try to understand ‘practice’:

Practice is using descriptions and/or explanations of a phenomena to predict and control it.

That definition straight away indicates there is a relationship between theory and practice. There is however a subtle difference between theory and practice. Theory is developed by an independent observer, while practice is by a doer who is using those observations. The objective of a theory is to just describe and/or explain phenomena, whereas the objective of a doer is to predict them and control wherever possible.

Hold, hold! I am not saying that a ‘doer’ uses someone else’s ‘theory’. In most cases, in our daily routines, we work based on our own little theories. Very often, the observer and the doer are the same person. The irony is that in those cases, we are not so conscious about the theories we hold or make up. Instead, we are prone to laying more emphasis on what is happening at the moment. Yet, we have a habit of stopping in between to take a macro picture and proceed our actions going forward–this, we tend to under-state or under-observe!

If I may go back to the samsung galaxy tab example, I was the observer who made up the theory. I made it up for you! But my friend who suffered that ill-fate is the ‘doer’ and the ‘observer’ simultaneously. After that phenomena (yeah! you might want to call it an ‘incident’; but that is fine if you refer to the definition of phenomena), the my friend and me have a theory to hold (because we observed), and an alternative action plan for the next such instance. When you tell me that you are buying a phone, I might tell you, “why don’t you wait for a week to see if the prices go down”. That is what I mean when I say, ‘predict and control’, as a practitioner–trying to think of what might happen (see, I am wiser by my friend’s experience), and trying to control what might happen (help another friend not feel at loss).

But is that it? Are theory and practice so related? Isn’t there any difference at all?

I wouldn’t dare say that. Because there are at least a couple of differences I can find. Theories are abstract observations, hard to read (because they are often playing around in the mind of an individual, and what is in my mind is not visible to you), and they are very generic (because making observations about similar set of phenomena, not just one, makes it easy to make up an allegedly ‘universal’ theory). Practice on other side involves an astute ability to judge the applicability of a theory (like I may not want to use ‘big bang theory’ to beat up my friend; it just doesn’t work, though it may break up his mind better), easy to observe, and is very specific (because it is always like on-the-go).

Now, it is time for conclusion. Think again about the proverb, “those can’t do, teach”.

I would say, “teaching is doing too” and “doing needs teaching”. May be, I wouldn’t agree with that proverb!