Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Numerical data and the meaning of measurement
- 2 Quantitative psychology's intellectual inheritance
- 3 Quantity, number and measurement in science
- 4 Early psychology and the quantity objection
- 5 Making the representational theory of measurement
- 6 The status of psychophysical measurement
- 7 A definition made to measure
- 8 Quantitative psychology and the revolution in measurement theory
- Glossary
- List of references
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
4 - Early psychology and the quantity objection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Numerical data and the meaning of measurement
- 2 Quantitative psychology's intellectual inheritance
- 3 Quantity, number and measurement in science
- 4 Early psychology and the quantity objection
- 5 Making the representational theory of measurement
- 6 The status of psychophysical measurement
- 7 A definition made to measure
- 8 Quantitative psychology and the revolution in measurement theory
- Glossary
- List of references
- Index
- IDEAS IN CONTEXT
Summary
One cannot build a house without bricks; and, when even the plan for the house has yet to be drawn, one cannot have everything right on the first try and get it all to fit together.
(Gustav Fechner)It may be at present pseudo-science, in the sense that we have drawn conclusions without adequate knowledge, but it is none the less the best we can do.
(James McKeen Cattell)The classical conception of measurement was accepted within modern psychology until the 1940s. From about 1950 until the present, Stevens' concept of measurement has been more or less officially endorsed. This transition required the existence of two prior conditions and a precipitating cause. First, conditions within psychology had to be favourable: by 1940 quantitative psychology had already adopted a modus operandi fitting Stevens' definition; the quantity objection was effectively ignored; and a wide class of number-generating operations were routinely accepted as measurement procedures. However, this was not sufficient. Psychology, as a new science, possessed neither the moral nor the intellectual resources necessary unilaterally to redefine a central scientific concept. Hence, second, relevant external conditions had to be ripe. By the 1940s, psychology was more sensitive to developments within the philosophy of science than it was to developments within quantitative science per se, so the external conditions required related to developments within that branch of philosophy. Supplementing these, an event was required to cause acceptance of a new definition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Measurement in PsychologyA Critical History of a Methodological Concept, pp. 78 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999