“Intervention is a powerful discovery technique that researchers could de-emphasize only at great cost. Intervention is useful in pedagogy as well as in science. We discover what works in the classroom by intervening, that is, by trying things out” (307). More, there does not seem to be a universal definition among scholars of positivism. Because of this, “one begins to suspect that there are no positivists. Rather, positivists are an imaginary foe invented for the familiar rhetorical purpose of name calling” (313 emphasis in original). Hayes suggests that this name calling comes down to claiming “turf”. Humanists seem to want to distance themselves from these empirical methods.
However, Hayes argues that “such [empirical] methods help scholars answer questions that are not as well answered by other methods” (313). More, “averages and standard deviations…are very important in practice. In making important decisions [like a school principal investing in resources], people want to know what risks they are taking. Modern empirical methods are designed to help us deicide how much confidence we can place in our beliefs” (314).
On another note: “Naïve realism is the belief that all of the qualities we sense – including sounds, colors, tastes, smells ad tactile sensation – are, in fact, characteristic of the external objects that are perceived as giving rise to them” (309). While Hayes acknowledges that we do not take it to the extreme, he argues that everyone is a realist because believe people and their situations to be real (310).