Book and Journal of Mattanaw

#Research for Semi-Scholarly Articles

##General

Semi-scholarly article writing is distinguished from more academic writing, by the amount of time spent on research, time spent perfecting the article, and the lack of preparation for submission to a particular academic journal. The goal is scholarly but creative self-publication. There is need to adopt any particular form, or meet any specific external requirement. It is an aesthetic but intellectual production, with no judge other than the author.

###Timeline * Phase I might take a few days of focused writing. * Phase II and III collection might take a day. Ingestion and digestion might take a week- however the goal is to identify value and quickly cast aside anything that won’t help the paper. * Phase IV might take a couple days to a week. This will likely consist of quickly rewriting, then polishing. * Phase V is simply the self-publication phase.

Using this approach, you should be able to produce an article no less than once per month.

##Phase I. Writing, Brainstorming, Idea formation, Exhaustive Reductionism.

- Write all initial and original ideas before doing any research.
- Think it through, as if no research had ever been conducted, and no methodology was determined. You are the first; you are the trail-blazer of this topic, and are building the field from scratch.
- Rapidly destroy and replace any idea that doesn’t feel right, but expand as well.
- Goal is the best reductionism possible using your own mind. Following that, think about what is artful. What is the gestalt involved? How would religion approach it?
- Once the efflux of ideas is complete, or stagnation occurs, move to phase II.

##Phase II. Collection, and Incubation. Find Key Theories, Build a Tree of Knowledge, Reflect.

- First use the web to find the key theories and contributors. Take it from an interdisciplinary approach. What does psychology say about this? How about mathematics? How about ethics, business, political science, biology, or economics? How do other cultures see it? All you are doing here is building a comprehensive understanding of all that has been done on the topic.
- Read reference entries for each of the promising areas above. Read general encyclopedias, dictionaries, then move to specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias.

##Phase III. Journal research.

- What are the best articles, what do you think is most important. You are not going to read every article… Just read those that are key based on the views of experts, and then choose and read those you think are important.

##Phase IV. Rewriting.

- In this phase, you just rewrite based on your expanded view from the writing. YOu should treat this as though you are creating a semi conclusive view. You will find your originality intact because of how you started the process, yet you will have formed something based on a combination of your experience, and the experience of many others (hopefully using everything that matters and nothing else).

##Phase V. Editing and Publication.

- At this point you should have at least one other person read the paper, who would provide you honest advice, and will reliably help readability.

Mattanaw I., formerly "Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh"

I am a retired executive, software architect, and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of Moral Philosophy and Ethics, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and more recently, Economics. I am a Pandisciplinarian, and Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.

Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2024. Topics touch on all of life's categories, and blend them with logical rationality and my own particular system of ethics. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my incipient theory of ethics, two decades in preparation. This Book and Journal is the gradual unfolding of that ethic, and my living autobiography, in a collection of individual books that fit into groups of book collections.

This Book and Journal is already one of the largest private websites and writings ever prepared, at nearly 1 million words, greater than 50,000 images and videos, and nearly one terabyte of space utilized. The entire software architecture is of my creation. Issues of the book for sale can be found under featured. These texts are handmade by myself, and are of excellent quality, and constitute the normal issues of my journal that can also be subscribed to. The entire work is a transparent work in progress. Not all is complete, and it will remain in an incomplete state until death.

I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.

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