Setting the Scene

This (crude) matrix gives an indication of the territory of my investigation. The vertical axis represents an epistemological bipolarity of how one can know: and the horizontal axis represents our attitude to what there is to know, and whether this is from an essentialist (certainty) or non-essentialist (uncertainty) perspective. For the sake of situating a hypothesis (see below), the scope of study is concentrated in the upper right quadrant.