This paper historicizes “rigour”, discipline” and “systematic” as inventions of a certain rational spirit of Enlightenment that was radicalized during the 19th century. The paper first engages “rigour”, “discipline” and “systematic” as historical terms or principles that acquired value only temporarily in a phase of transition during the 19th century when a nationally oriented and systematic culture of research was established as part of a modern episteme. Around 1900 this development was already perceived as problematic, triggering much criticism from philosophy and the arts, and even within the sciences. “Discipline”, “rigor” and “systematic” then were attacked as alienating principles, and it was scientific research in particular that was critiqued by philosophers as being divorced from lived experience and the meaning of human life (see, e.g., Feyerabend, 1975). The ongoing competitive spirit between the humanities and the sciences may testify to a mixed or even divided attitude towards “discipline”, “rigor” and “systematic” within educational research. For example, objectivity a component of rigour has been staunchly critiqued by feminist philosophers of science (Daston & Galison, 2007; Harding, 2015). After historicizing the terms, our paper highlights historical shifts in epistemology, examining new paradigms of research such as transdisciplinarity, constructivism, actor-network-theory, and new materialisms. These newer approaches stress the productivity of scientific collaboration across so-called disciplines, question the relationship of rigor to objectivity, and strive to overcome the divide between nature and intellect, or material and spiritual worlds. New technologies of data collection and analysis are now perceived as promising philosophical opportunities for educational research. In the process, concepts of “rigor” and “discipline” have been translated into new epistemological frameworks. For example, big data are now being used to reach out to new dimensions of research that stress horizontal and entangled relationships rather than older types of hierarchical knowledge creation. An example of such epistemological change can be seen in recent shifts in conceptualizations of validity from inferential models to big data (Cf., failures of recent political polling models to predict elections). Finally, the paper looks at some new digitally inspired paradigms in the humanities and in educational research while stressing historical changes in the constructions of rigour and discipline. We conclude by imagining how the digital humanities can be seen as creative endeavours that deal with big data in horizontal, additive and subversive ways to enrich and broaden the idea of disciplinary order, rigor and systematic hierarchies for educational philosophy.
