Term for reverse lookup of concepts

Question

Suppose I have envisioned a concept that I am fairly certain has been explored before. I can describe its nature and its characteristics, but I do not know the formal name of the concept, nor its history and prior development. My objective is to formalize my research by identifying the concept’s formal name and basing my research on its preexisting foundations. (My research may or may not elaborate/extend the current state of research; it could simply be a search for an existing concept I want to investigate). What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of finding both an existing concept and porting your notions of that concept onto the formalisms previously established for that concept?

Up to now, I have been informally using the terms rebasing and porting, as in

rebasing/porting my own informal understanding of the concept onto its formal foundations

If no such word exists for what I’ve described, I do offer rebasing and porting as self-descriptive definiendums.

Perhaps the first part of my definition, i.e., finding an existing concept, can be considered optional as it is well-described by reverse lookup; however, the latter part is key.

To make it more clear what it is I am after, here is an example: Alice is studying networks, and exploring how to permit communication between any two nodes using the fewest connections possible. As she develops this concept, she suspects it might have already been fleshed out in academia, so she searches for the name of the concept and finds spanning trees. Now that she knows what it is she has conceived, she can explore the concept further. She can also translate (port, “rebase”, etc) her personal, informal language, notations, conventions, and concepts onto their corresponding formal equivalents previously established in academia. What is the name of the translation/porting/rebasing/etc process described in italics in the previous sentence?

Answer 1

I'm not sure that any such specialized term exists, or at least I have never heard of such. The process, however, is quite familiar to me. I find it most interesting when I discover that several different subjects have all approached the same topic from different directions, each typically having invented its own largely unrelated terminology.

As for what to call it? I would typically refer to it simply as searching for related work and then connecting my work to the prior results. It might be a fun target for a neologism, though!

Answer 2

I don't have a name for the two elements you describe, but I do have names for each distinct step:

1. "What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of finding ... an existing concept ...": I call this "search for concepts". I have an article that describes this in some detail, but in brief, there are two main components: first search past literature for the concept along with all the synonyms that you are aware of; second, identify new synonyms for the concepts from the studies that you identify and then search for those synonyms in the literature. You continue this process iteratively until you've satisfactorily identified the concept and all its synonyms.

2. "What would be the name (ie. the definiendum) of the process of ... porting your notions of that concept onto the formalisms previously established for that concept?": I would simply call this a redefinition or clarification of a concept. For me, it's that simple, but please note my following comments.

It seems that in your search for a new name for this process you place a lot of weight in the novelty of the fact that you are incorporating your own notions or insights into the new and improved version of the concept. However, this is what every researcher does if they define a concept. They are not simply repeating prior definitions, or else they would just quote "So et al (2015) defined it as 'la la la'". By offering a definition in their own words, they are always incorporating "personal, informal language, notations, conventions, and concepts onto their corresponding formal equivalents previously established in academia". I don't see any need to coin a new term (such as "rebase" or "port") for something that is nothing more to me than offering a new definition of an existing thing ("redefinition") or "clarifying" a previously ambinguous definition.

One thing you did not mention, though, which I consider extremely important if you offer your own new definition of an existing concept: You should very clearly explain why the past definitions are unsatisfactory for your purpose. Why are you multiplying definitions for the same general thing? You don't need to say that past definitions are bad; you only need to demonstrate that your purpose is different in an important way, and that past definitions do not do it justice. If you cannot clearly justify this, then it is best to rather pick the best of the existing definitions you have found (and explain why the one you picked is best for your purposes).

Also, please note that my answer applies strictly to dealing with existing concepts, not to new concepts that you have discovered or invented; my answer would be different for defining a brand new concept.

Answer 3

I hereby define porting, in the context of conducting research, to be the process of adapting one's notions of a concept onto previously established theories, terminology, and conventions for that concept.1