RESEARCH: The Keyword.

PhD students usually didn't get the true meaning of research. If they use search engine such as GOOGLE to find the meaning for the term word "RESEARCH", they will get the answer such as this;

Research is...

"the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions".

Although the definition seem right and sophisticated, nevertheless it didn't gave the true purpose of research. Just like a salesman, if you gave less convincing words, you might not be able to sell anything.Therefore, the powerful keyword need to be grasp by Phd or Master student. The powerful keyword is "MANIPULATION".

Research is about systematic manipulation of parameters to gain valuable inferences that lead to new knowledge or discoveries.

Now, the word manipulation, gave the sense that the student might focus on things to manipulate that later lead to conclusion. Imagine, if we are to investigate the sand, what on earth can we do? What is the part that we can manipulate? 

The simplest ordinary things that we after all these eon do in manipulating things, is heating. So, if we manipulate the sand by heating, we get glass. Now if we control the heating and cooling of the sand, we get Silica crystal. Research is always about manipulating, measuring and making the inference and connection to the well establish knowledge that have been gathered through time.

Therefore, in pursuing your PhD, spend a bit of time to think about keyword of things. Research...the keyword is Manipulating parameters systematically, Making Measurement, Inferences, Comparing research data/results and looking for interconnection with the well establish knowledge.

Now if you realize, in this post, we started by definition of the word "research", looking into relevant keywords, that makes you exploring more keywords. This is the strategy called Chaos Theory style " Start at a point, end up at many, is a strategy in exploring knowledge.