Authorized formulation
Doctrine
States what a community or institution teaches.
Valid claim: This formulation is documented and holds this status.
Bounded method comparison
Doctrine and lived practice
How do formal teaching and everyday enactment inform one another without one standing in for the other?
Observed and reported enactment
Lived practice
Documents what particular people do and say.
Valid claim: These participants enacted and described practice this way.
Shared comparison axes
- Community
- Period
- Practice or proposition
Non-equivalences to preserve
- Official teaching is not a prevalence estimate.
- Observed deviation is not automatically rejection.
Comparison procedure
- 1.Sample each evidence stream independently.
- 2.Map agreements and gaps.
- 3.Limit generalization to the observed population.
Prohibited inference
Neither an official document nor a vivid anecdote may represent every member of a tradition.