Stevens’ forgotten crossroads: the divergent measurement traditions in the physical and psychological sciences from the mid-twentieth century
By J. McGrane. Frontiers in Psychology, 2015
220 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The late 19th and early 20th Centuries saw the consolidation in physics of the three main traditions that predominate in discussions of measurement theory. These are: (i) the systematic tradition pioneered by Maxwell; (ii) the representational tradition pioneered by Campbell; and (iii) the operational tradition pioneered by Bridgman (1927). These divergent approaches created uncertainty about the nature of measurement in the physical sciences and provided Stevens (1946) with an opportunity and rationale to, in effect, reinvent the definition of scientific measurement. Stevens appropriated the representational and operational traditions as the sole basis for his definition of measurement, excluding any place for the systematic approach. In committing to Stevens’ path, the psychological sciences were blinded to the advances made in metrology, the establishment of the International System (SI) and the standard units contained within this system. These advances were only possible due to the deep conceptual and instrumental connections between the system of physical units and the body of physical theory and laws developed over the preceding centuries. It is argued that if the psychological sciences are to ever achieve equivalent methodological advances, they must bridge this ‘metrological gap’ created by Stevens’ measurement crossroads and understand the ways in which the systematic approach advanced measurement. This means that psychological measurement needs to be de-abstracted, rid of operational rules for numerical assignment and set upon a foundation of quantitative theory, definition and law. In the absence of such theoretical foundations, claims of measurement in the psychological sciences remain a methodological chimera.
Subfields: General Psychology, History and Philosophy of Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65d0eb1e459b3d14524d1a1deeeaf3ab4d5763d9
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In General Psychology
In History and Philosophy of Science
Citations in the corpus
- Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation (2017, background): “…or discovery of values of nominal properties, which is usually referred to as classification rather than measurement), it is not even universally true in the physical sciences, from which much of the logic and vocabulary of psychological measurement was originally adopted (McGrane, 2015).”