Shedding the Quantitative Imperative
Journal Title: Social Behavior Research and Practice – Open Journal - Year 2016, Vol 1, Issue 1
Abstract
I am, unfortunately, trained in the quantitative imperative associated with pythagoreanism and adopted by scientists during the development of common scales for length, mass, temperature, and time. While interested in complex and social behaviors, I have found myself at odds within my chosen field of psychology due to what is considered a requirement of science: true quantitative measurement. My background in physics impressed upon me a different definition of measurement than what I have become accustomed to within psychology, especially within the social and cognitive subfields. The quantitative imperative holds knowledge requires measurement, and measurement of an attribute requires a discovery of continuous ratios of real numbers (i.e. a=r*b where r is a unit and b is a magnitude). From this perspective, knowledge requires quantification, and quantification requires units that describe continuous scales.
Authors and Affiliations
David Philip Arthur Craig
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP541703
- DOI 10.17140/SBRPOJ-1-102
- Views 142
- Downloads 0
Impact of the Shadow Activity on Social and Economic Relationships, Income Level and Welfare of the Population
The main purpose of the literature review is an analysis of the impact of shadow activity on social and economic relations and the welfare of the population. The scientific novelty of the research is in the development a...
Pokémon Go Warnings: Will they Work?
Over the past few months, we have witnessed a number of tragedies that could potentially have been prevented. These include the alligator attack on a 2-year old boy at Disney and the shooting of Harambe the Gorilla at th...
Behavioral Couples Therapy for Substance Use Disorders
The results of numerous studies over the past four decades have consistently revealed the effectiveness of couple and family-based approaches for drug and alcohol abuse. Behavioral couples therapy (BCT) is a conjoint app...
Humanization of the Learning Process in Higher Educational Institutions
In the current context of globalization and integration into the world educational space, the issues related to psychological and information safety of the learning environment are the most topical. Global socio-economic...
The “I”s have it: Sex and Social Status Differences on Twitter
We examined the use of “I” in Tweets posted by 50 famous people during a one-month window. The linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC) was implemented to determine the percentage of 140-character Tweets that used the pe...