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Psychology as a Quantitative Rational Science (Excerpts)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

L. L. Thurstone
L. L. Thurstone*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Abstract

The purpose of the Psychometric Society is to encourage mathematical psychology. This article justifies the emphasis on quantification, and upon rationalization in science, as well as the Society's conception of the fundamental nature of science.

Type
50th Anniversary Section
Information
Psychometrika , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 7 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

Editor's Note: On September 4, 1936, L. L. Thurstone gave the presidential address at the first annual meeting of the Psychometric Society in Hanover, NH. Uncertainties about the viability of the new journal, Psychometrika, led his colleagues to urge him to publish his address in Science. Excerpts from that paper are reprinted here. Thurstone's examples are now quite dated, and have been omitted, thus thwarting his major intent of providing examples of quantification. But his point of view towards the goals of the new Society is remarkably fresh, and is expressed with typical Thurstone clarity. The reference to the complete paper is:

Thurstone, L. L. (1937). Psychology as a quantitative rational science. Science, 85, 227–232. (Copyright 1937 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)