Intuitive cyclic phenomenology

Trying to revive Bergson’s intellectual tradition, we argue that intuition is a necessary component of any research, but it is particularly important for processing rich data obtained from unstructured or semi-structured interviews. The cognitive process of the researcher follows a cyclic interplay of intuitive and non-intuitive reasoning while academic publications usually only report about the non-intuitive constituent. While processing unstructured interviews conducted with 17 Nobel Laureates, a methodological process emerged which we are trying to develop into a formalized framework. Researcher A conducted all the interviews and Researcher B, without reading the transcripts, elicited Researcher A’s intuitive notions into a concept map. Researcher A then coded the interviews according to the emerging concepts, identifying additional concepts along the way, which have been, in turn, added to the concept map, reinforcing the cyclic nature of the process. Finally, research reports were written according to the various views of the concept map.