What is Research?
In the term of modern education, Research is an academic activity which is done to resolve the needs and challenges. But the definition of earliest form of research is not the same because at those times there were no college, no selection of research topic, no synopsis, no Ph. D fellowship, no research paper, no Thesis writing tension, NO plagiarism, NO Ph.D. viva.
Research is not New Phenomena
It is not new thing to the world. It is not modern thought. Continuation of research is from the development human beings. The quality of research may be subject of debate. It could be improved in the modern days. Objectives of the modern-day research may be changed. Research audience may be minor small group of people. But, no one could deny that the commencement of research is since the commencement of the development of human being. All the archival things are not the products of brain-less activities but the result of research of the degree-less scholars.
Quality of Research
We can not reject the quality of then research as ignorable by comparing from AI era ones. Quality of a research work should be judged by the complexity of the problem, resource available and time taken. In the earlier days, in name of resources there were woods, air, mountains. In that situation, achieving the needs and to fulfil the necessity through inventing simple tools, maybe useless in modern time, are also quality research.
Research Factors
Time-Factor
The needs of Pre-history period person was not same as of today’s person. The needs of today’s person will not be same of those of the future generation. So, time is a factor that play vital role as a driving force for research work. As time passes away, needs of a person change in various ways. In the Pre-history era, the people’s the most coveted needs were to gain the food whole year. So, the then people focused to search only about the food requirements. Like how to get food? How to get food nearby? How to preserve food? After securing the food availability, one could face the problem of how to get favourite food?
Place-Factor
The nature of needs and challenges depends on the place also. Place is a major factor to nurture the dimensions of the problem. At a particular, place there is an ecosystem of problems. It could be understood through an example. Form biology point of view, a place is platform of lots of ecosystems. Like in a pond, ecosystem of frogs, ecosystem of fish, ecosystem of small plants, ecosystem of insects etc. In the same way, a particular place is also ecosystem of problems. For instance, a desert dwelling creature needs water, fertile land, amicable climate and availability of food year-round. So, the old instruments, home items are the outcome of the necessity based research work of the people living in this place.
Person-Factor
Person living in a particular time period and at particular place faces distinct type needs and challenges. Here needs and challenges are polygonal in nature because they are influenced by person’s psychology, sociology, economy and place-factors as well as time-factor. So, the research work or efforts to fulfil the need and challenges are more complex. Here lots of other thing play role also. In the earliest time, people also thought to ease the lives of people. The bottom-line driving force of all the earliest research works is the people.
Climate-Factor
Climate is also a crucial player in the research field. There are several types of climate. And each climate has its own set up and get up. So, the earlier people thought about the ways to cope with the climate rage. In the cold climate, the first and foremost requirement is to save ourselves. And all the research activities were focused on cold-oriented problems. In such place, the shape of the house, and even utensils are designed keeping the climate factor in mind.
Art-Factor
In old days, people were in 24 hours confrontation with nature-rage due to not being well equipped with safety articles and tools. In this situation, artistic works, material availability, the safety of artistic works were among deadly challenges. Even in such adverse situation, they thought about creation and preservation. They made lots of instruments to gift their future generation. They needed to research and develop tools and technique to fulfil their needs.
Language-Factor
It is said that invention of language was one of the biggest breakthroughs. It gave the opportunity to preserve the researched works in the written form. It was a tool to preserve their experience in their own words and picture. In India, there was an oral form tradition of catering knowledge from one generation to another. In Theravada Buddhism, the classification of the whole teachings (dhamma) of the Buddha is called Tipitaka that means three boxes. The term “boxes” are representation of a searchful thought. This word is a simile to fulfil the need and challenges of the then era. As box are used to carry the articles from one place to another one. In the same way, these boxes of dhamma of the Buddha were used to carry the teaching of the Buddha form one generation to another one. So, invention of language was a research work and it was used as a research tool to preserve the knowledge and to carry the information forward to the next generation. It gave birth to a new form of research that provoke to think about the phonetics, syntax, grammar and many more.
Basic Needs
Basic needs also played key role in the invention of lots of things. For instance, earthen pot and other home utensils are the research work result in order to fulfil the house basic requirements. The invention of well could not rejected as simple work or useless work from present day point of view. It was a marvellous research work of that period. It was multipurpose invention. It also played role in the domesticating the cattle and living human beings at a place for long time. It was also one of the powerful tools to eliminate the nomadic life.
Entertainment-Factor
Since earliest time, people hit brain hard to find out the ways for entertainments. In the time of the Buddha, there were lots of entertainment activities like telling stories, hen fight, singing, beating drum etc. All the four types of musical instruments were the research work of the then time by the degreeless-researchers.
Conclusion
So, the earliest form of research could be analysed by keeping the then era/time challenging in mind. Most of the earliest research are useless today. But, it is the duty of the AI cantered scholars to give credit and acknowledge the hard work and efforts of degreeless-researchers that spent numerous nights without sleep in order to make life easier of the then generation. The paramount of AI centric research is the story of the long journey travelled through the path searched by the degreeless-researchers.