The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in the Social Sciences

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction: Quantification and Enlightenment

   • Barry Glassner, Jonathan D. Moreno

   Pages 1-12

3. The Law of Quality and Quantity, or What Numbers Can and Can’t Describe

   • Peter Caws

   Pages 13-28

4. The Qualitative Significance of Quantitative Representation

   • Charles W. Smith

   Pages 29-42

5. ‘Objectivity’ and Rapport

   • Charles W. Lidz

   Pages 43-56

6. Telling Convincing Stories: A Plea for Cautious Positivism in Case-Studies

   • David Silverman

   Pages 57-77

7. The Qualitative-Quantitative Distinction in Political Science

   • David J. Sylvan

   Pages 79-97

8. Schopenhauer’s Will and Idea in Durkheim’s Methodology

   • Stjepan G. Meštrović

   Pages 99-118

9. Cultural Kinds: Imposition and Discovery in Anthropology

   • Robert Feleppa

   Pages 119-153

10. Monistic and Dualistic Canons for the Natural and Human Sciences

    • Joseph Margolis

    Pages 155-178

11. Explanation and Quantification

    • Peter T. Manicas

    Pages 179-205

12. Back Matter

    Pages 207-236

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Without of course adopting a Platonic metaphysics, the eighteenth-century philosophes were Grecophiles who regarded the Athenian philosophers as their intellectual forbearers and mentors. So powerful was their identification with c1assification that ancient ideas were taken as keys to the design of the modem world, but usually the ideas were taken separately and as divided from their systematic context. The power of number was an idea the En­ lightenment thinkers deployed with their legendary passion and vigor, particularly as an instrument for social reconstruction. It is no exaggemtion to say that the role of quantities in contemporary social scientific theorizing cannot be understood with any depth absent a recollection of the philosophes' axial development of the notion of quantification. It is a commonplace that for the philosophes progress required releasing human abilities to have power over nature. Aprerequisite for this power was knowledge of the underlying causes of natural events, knowledge that required quantitative precision. Enlightenment thinkers were sufficiently aware of themselves as products of their time to appreciate the importance of a liberal social environment to the knowledge enterprise; the supposition that the reverse is also the case, that enhanced knowledge could advance social conditions, came easily.

• Design
• Plato
• environment
• knowledge
• nature

• Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, USA

  Barry Glassner

• Division of Humanities in Medicine, SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, USA

  Jonathan D. Moreno

Policies and ethics