In this phase of the methodology the nurse researcher, the knower,
compares and synthesizes multiple known realities. Buber says of
comparison:
"The act of contrasting, carried out properly and adequately,
leads to the grasp of the principle."[18]
In this comparison and synthesis the "I" of the researcher assumes the
position of the knowing place. The knower, like an interpreter, allows
dialogue between the multiple known realities. These realities are
unknowable to each other directly. The knower interprets, sorts, and
classifies.
In the human knowing place discovered differences in similar realities
do not compete, one does not negate the other. Each can be true,
present, "all-at-once." Differences can make visible the greater
realities of each. Desan, the philosopher, says of this kind of
synthesis:
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"... a synthetic view where two or more positions are seen to
illuminate and to transfigure one another through their mutual
presence."[19]
The knower alert to an aspect present in a single reality can question
the other reality on this aspect. This aspect may be present in both,
more blatant in one than in another. Its forms may be different or
modified in each. It may be totally absent in one. Differences found may
arouse or bring to consciousness other questions to ask of the data.
This oscillating, dialectical process continues throughout reflection on
the multiple realities. This indirect dialogue is recorded by the
investigator as the complementary synthesis.
This synthesis is more than additive because it allows mutual
representation and the illumination of one reality by another.
The fourth phase of this research methodology is like that phase of
clinical nursing in which a nurse compares and synthesizes the
similarities and differences of like nursing situations and arrives at
an expanded view.
Phase V: Succession Within the Nurse From the Many to the Paradoxical
One
This phase of phenomenological nursology is highly probable if not
absolutely necessary. Desan says:
"Truth emerges in and through the relational operation. For the
way of paradox is the way of truth."[20]
The investigator may struggle with the multiplicity of views now
consciously part of and within herself. Again Desan:
"... this unrest "is" the mind of man, reaching its center....
From this center the splendor of multiplicity is visible."[21]
The researcher, mulling over and considering the relationships between
the multiple views, insightfully corrects and expands her own angular
view. This is not a right-wrong type of correction. Such correction
would amount only to an ongoing eternal recurrence of a frustrating
nature. Rather this correction takes the form of ever more
inclusiveness. Struggling with the communion of the different ideas the
knower takes an intuitive leap, through and yet beyond these ideas, into
a greater understanding. She then may come up with a conception or
abstraction that is inclusive of and beyond the multiplicities and
contradictions.
This inclusive conception or abstraction is an expression of the
investigator in her here and now, with the old truths and the novel
truths, none obliterated.
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The fifth phase of this phenomenological nursology method can be equated
to that phase of clinical professional nursing in which the nurse
propels nursing knowledge forward. In this phase a nurse struggling with
the mutual communion of multiple nursing situations arrives at a
conception that is meaningful to the many or to all. From the specific
concrete ideas of the many situations she moves through dilemma to
resolution which is nursing expressed abstractly in units or as a whole,
as one.
Experiential knowledge of nursing, years in which I came to know self
and the other while implementing scientific facts, allowed me as a
knower to recognize the relevance of this philosophical nursology
method. This method does not aim at conventionality. Rather it strives
to meaningfully augment and share conceptualized nurse-world realities.