Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Measurement in the Human Sciences:
Credos & Controversies 

About the book

“Whatever exists at all exists in some amount. To know it thoroughly involves knowing its quantity as well as its quality.”  This was the credo articulated by Edward Thorndike in 1918 to make the case for the importance of measurement for scientific advance in the education of children.  Although measurement and quantification have always been closely linked in the physical sciences, it is only more recently that the same linkages have been made in the human sciences. In the human sciences, many of the attributes we care the most about are non-physical: they consist of abilities, personalities, dispositions, attitudes and values. Can we measure them in the same sense that we measure the temperature in our homes with a thermostat? Does measurement help us to know these qualities more thoroughly by assessing their magnitudes? What does measurement in the human sciences entail?

The purpose of this book is to provide some ways of answering these questions by exploring the historical and conceptual foundations of measurement. At the heart of this book are the ideas and innovations of six historical figures: Gustav Fechner, Francis Galton, Alfred Binet, Charles Spearman, Louis Thurstone and S. S. Stevens. These ideas and innovations are steeped in controversy because the foundational proposition that human attributes are measurable is itself controversial. This book introduces readers to the origins of educational and psychological scaling, mental testing, classical test theory, factor analysis, and diagnostic classification, and illustrates them in their historical context. Controversies include the quantity objection, the role of measurement in promoting eugenics, theories of intelligence, the measurement of attitudes, and the conceptualization of all forms of numeric assignment by rule as instances of measurement. Readers will emerge from this book with a deeper appreciation for both the challenges and affordances of measurement in quantitative research.  You can find a preview of the book (TOC, first chapter, references) here.