Grid/Group Analysis for Historians of Science?

Shapin S. , “History of science and its sociological reconstructions”, History of science, xx (1982), 157–211.

Caneva K. L. , “What should we do with the monster? Electro-magnetism and psychosociology of knowledge”, in Mendelsohn E. and Elkana Y. (eds), Sciences and cultures (Dordrecht and Boston, 1981), 101–31. See also Caneva K. L. , “From Galvanism to electrodynamics: The transformation of German physics and its social context”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, ix (1978), 63–159.

Rudwick M. J. S. , “Cognitive styles in geology”, in Douglas M. (ed.), Essays in the sociology of perception (London, Boston and Henley, 1982), 212–41.

Pickstone J. V. , “Bureaucracy, liberalism and the body in post-Revolutionary France: Bichat's physiology and the Paris School of Medicine”, History of science, xix (1981), 115–42.

Bloor C. and Bloor D. , “Twenty industrial scientists: A preliminary exercise”, in Douglas (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 83–102.

I am informed by Bloor Drs that the data utilized in their study were not collected with the intention in mind of testing Douglas's hypotheses. This circumstance gives some added weight to their findings.

Bloor D. , “Polyhedra and the abominations of Leviticus: Cognitive styles in mathematics”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1978), 245–72 (republished in Douglas (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 191–218).

Lakatos I. , Proofs and refutations: The logic of mathematical discovery (Cambridge, 1976). (This work first appeared as a series of papers in The British journal for the philosophy of science for 1963/64).

Bloor D. , Wittgenstein: A social theory of knowledge (London and Basingstoke, 1983), ch. 7.

Boon L. , “De ontvangst van Mendel in Engeland: Reacties op theoretische innovatie in het licht van de culturele antropologie van de wetenschap”, Kennis en methode, iii (1979), 93–118.

Wilhelm Peter , “Legitimates en sociale structuur: Insiders en outsiders in de wetenschap”, Kennis en methode, v (1981), 32–55.

Douglas M. , Evans-Pritchard (Glasgow, 1980).

Douglas M. , The Lele of the Kasai (London, 1963).

See particularly: Douglas M. , Purity and danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo (London, 1966); idem, Natural symbols (London, 1970); idem, Cultural bias (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Occasional Paper no. 35 (London, 1978)).

E.g., Bloor D. , “Durkheim and Mauss revisited: Classification and the sociology of knowledge”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xiii (1982), 267–97.

Durkheim E. and Mauss M. , Primitive classification, translated from the French and edited with an introduction by Needham Rodney (London, 1963), 82–83; originally published in Année sociologique, 1901/2. On Durkheim, see, for example, Lukes S. , Emile Durkheim: His life and work (London, 1973); Giddens A. , Durkheim (Glasgow, 1978); Gieryn T. F. , “Durkheim's sociology of scientific knowledge”, Journal of the history of the behavioral sciences, xviii (1982), 107–29.

Durkheim and Mauss , op. cit. (ref. 16), ch. 3.

Sapir E. , Culture, language and personality (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1956), 36, 68–69 and passim.

Whorf B. L. , Language, thought and reality: Selected writings of B. L. Whorf, edited with an introduction by Carroll John B. (London and New York, 1956). See particularly the essay “The relation of habitual thought and behaviour to language” (pp. 134–59), which compares the asserted thought processes of the speakers of ‘Standard Average European’ language and the language of the Hopi Indians of North America.

Benedict R. , Patterns of culture (New York, 1934; London, 1935).

The Zuñi in the American South-west, the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, and the Dobu of New Guinea.

Moderation for the Zuñi, ecstatic excess for the Kwakiutl, and paranoia for the Dobu.

Douglas , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1978), 2.

A classic instance of this in Western science is, I suggest, no less than that of Linnaeus himself. The terms ‘kingdom’, ‘class’ and ‘family’ were named after human social categories. His sexual system for plant classification was analogically described in terms of human matrimony. And in his ‘oecological’ writings all manner of social similes were deployed: “Nature has established a subordination and the appearance of Police in their several tribes. Among these we may consider the Mosses as the poor laborious peasants …. The Grasses are the Yeomanry of the vegetable kingdom, … Herbs may be looked upon as the Gentry …. The Trees are to be esteemed the Nobility of this state ….” ( Wilcke C. D. , “On the police of nature”, in Select dissertations from Amoenitates academicae … (London, 1781), 129–66, pp. 134–5). These dissertations were by Linnaeus or his students. It is believed that the students' writings accurately represented their teacher's opinions.

Evans-Pritchard E. E. , The Nuer: A description of the modes of livelihood and political institutions of a Nilotic people (Oxford, 1940), 105–7.

These are collected in Bernstein B. , Class, codes and controls, i: Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language (London, 1971).

Bernstein B. , “A socio-linguistic approach to social learning”, ibid., 119–39 (first published in Gould J. (ed.), Penguin survey of the social sciences (Harmondsworth, 1965), 114–68).

Bernstein B. , “A socio-linguistic approach to socialization: With some references to educability”, op. cit. (ref. 26), 143–69, originally published in Gumperz J. and Hymes D. (eds), Directions in socio-linguistics: The ethnography of communication (New York, 1971), 465–97.

Douglas M. , Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo (London, Boston and Henley, 1966). Ch. 3 of this work (“The abominations of Leviticus”) is particularly intriguing, offering a plausible anthropological explanation of some of the Old Testament taboos, a number of which still hold sway in the modern Judaeo-Christian cultural tradition. In his engaging paper of 1978, Bloor David , op. cit. (ref. 7), has sought to draw parallels with cognitive styles active in processes of mathematical reasoning. The whole question of intellectual ‘monster barring’ seems to have captured the imagination of historians such as Caneva and Rudwick who are interested in applying grid/roup analysis to historiography of science.

Douglas M. , Natural symbols: Explorations in cosmology (London and New York, 1970). (This was reissued in 1973, in Harmondsworth and New York. There is a revised edition, published in New York in 1982, with a new introduction).

ibid., 29.

ibid., 59.

Bernstein B. , “On the classification and framing of educational knowledge”, in Young M. F. D. (ed.), Knowledge and control: New directions for the sociology of education (London, 1971), 47–69.

Douglas M. , Natural symbols: Explorations in cosmology (London, 1973), 84.

Douglas M. , Implicit meanings: Essays in anthropology (London and Boston, 1975), 218.

Douglas , op. cit. (ref. 14, 1978), 7. (Note that the labelling of the quadrants has been altered as compared with Natural symbols (1973)).

It should be noted that this is really a kind of mnemonic, not an accurate representation of Douglas's theory; for grid and group are supposed to vary in intensity over the whole grid/group map, not be marked off in distinct regions.

Hampton J. , “Giving the grid/group dimensions an operational definition”, in Douglas (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 64–82.

Likert R. A. , “A technique for the measurement of attitudes”, Archives of psychology, xxii (1932), no. 140.

See Leinhardt S. , Social networks: A developing paradigm (New York, 1976).

Gross J. L. and Rayner S. , Measuring culture: A paradigm for the analysis of social organization (New York, 1985). I am most grateful to Professor Gross for sending me a xerox of the typescript of this book prior to publication. For earlier efforts towards quantification, see Douglas M. and Gross J. L. , “Food and culture: Measuring the intricacy of rule systems”, Social science information, xx (1981), 1–35; Gross J. L. , “A graphtheoretic model of social organization”, Annals of discrete mathematics, xiii (1981), 81–88; and Gross J. L. , “Information-theoretic scales for measuring cultural rule systems”, in Leinhardt S. (ed.), Social methodology: 1983–1984 (San Francisco and London, 1983).

Douglas M. and Isherwood B. , The world of goods (New York, 1979).

Douglas M. and Wildavsky A. , Risk and culture: An essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1982).

Douglas M. , (ed.), Food in the social order (New York, 1984).

Gaskell G. and Hampton J. , “A note on styles in accounting”, in Douglas (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 103–11.

Kelly G. A. , “‘Les gens de lettres’: An interpretation”, ibid., 120–31.

McLeod K. C. D. , “The political culture of warring states China”, ibid., 132–61.

Handelman D. , “Reflexivity in festival and other cultural events”, ibid., 162–90.

Rayner S. , “The perception of time and space in egalitarian sects: A millenarian cosmology”, ibid., 247–74.

Owen D. E. , “Spectral evidence: The witchcraft cosmology of Salem village in 1962”,ibid., 275–301.

Thompson M. , “The problem of the centre: An autonomous cosmology”, ibid., 302–27.

Edwards O. C. , “Extreme asceticism in early Syriac Christianity”, in Burson M. C. (ed.), Worship points the way: A celebration of the life and work of Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr. (New York, 1981), 200–13.

Ward J. O. , “Women, witchcraft, and social patterning in the later Roman law codes”, Prudentia, xiii (1981), 100–18.

Wildavsky A. , “Doing more and using less: Utilization of research as a result of regime”, paper presented at a conference in Cross-National Policy Research, Des Wissenschaftszentrums in Berlin, December 1983 (unpublished ms).

Thompson M. , “The aesthetics of risk: Culture or context”, in Schwingand R. C. Alkers W. A. (eds), Societal risk assessment: How safe is enough? (New York and London, 1982), 273–85. (This paper is rather tenuously related to grid/group analysis as deployed in Douglas, but it does envisage a four-fold division of a field of attitudes to risk. The author has written elsewhere on grid/group analysis; see ref. 51).

Harrell B. J. (State University of New York), “Social structure and manumission”, unpublished ms.

Mars G. , Cheats at work: An anthropology of workplace crime (London, 1982).

Bloor D. , Knowledge and social imagery (London, Henley and Boston, 1976).

Bloor and Bloor , op. cit. (ref. 5).

The task of estimating the grid and group intensities of Darwin or Franklin is clearly daunting. Whether it is really a less feasible task than estimating intellectual qualities of historical figures (say the I.Q.s of J. S. Mill or George iii) is unclear at this stage (though I suspect it is).

See Blashfield R. K. and Aldenerfer M. S. , “The literature on cluster analysis”, Multivariate behavioural research, xiii (1978), 271–95.

I do not wish to imply here that Popperian falsificationism (for example) is without theoretical problems. Even so, the grid/group theory has not yet been exposed to rigorous testing. It would be salutary if one of its proponents sought to do this. But the criteria of success or failure would need to be specified in advance. Otherwise, we should likely get an outpouring of ad hoc hypotheses.

Thompson M. , “A three-dimensional model for grid/group analysis” in Douglas (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 31–63.

Douglas M. , pers. comm., 6 December 1984.

Caneva , op. cit. (ref. 2, 1981), 124–5.

ibid., 124.

ibid.

Bloor , op. cit. (ref. 9), 145–9.

ibid., 149.

Jacob J. R. , Robert Boyle and the English Revolution: A study in social and intellectual change (New York, 1977).

Bloor and Bloor , op. cit. (ref. 5).

Gross and Rayner , op. cit. (ref. 41).

Rudwick , op. cit. (ref. 3), 235.

Cf. ref. 64.

Caneva , op. cit. (ref. 2).

One can readily envisage workers in a high grid/low group situation who ‘ignore’ anomalies rather than embracing them.

ibid., 118.

I am not accusing Caneva of this. He would, I think, regard his essay as a pioneering effort to achieve historical understanding with the help of grid/group analysis – not a definitive study.

See Larson J. L. , Reason and experience: The representation of natural order in the work of Carl von Linné (Berkeley and London, 1971), 99–121.

See Lindroth S. , “The two faces of Linnaeus”, in Frängsmyr T. , (ed.), Linnaeus: The man and his work (Berkeley and London, 1983), 1–62.

A possible source already available for such a study is Hilts V. L. , “A guide to Francis Galton's English men of science”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, lxv (1975), no. 5.

See again refs 42 to 57.

Darwin C. R. , The origin of species (Everyman edition, London, 1928), 455.

Bloor , op. cit. (ref. 7, 1982), 202.

ibid.

Douglas and Isherwood , op. cit. (ref. 42), 38.

Caneva , op. cit. (ref. 2, 1981), 102.

ibid.

ibid., 104.

ibid., 103.

Douglas , (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 3), 2.

Ostrander D. , ibid., 17.

ibid.

Thompson , op. cit. (ref. 63), 32.

ibid.

Mars , op. cit. (ref. 57), 24.

ibid. Mars, it may be noted, suggests determination of social autonomy, insulation, reciprocity, and competition in order to characterize the grid dimension; frequency (of social interaction), mutuality, scope (of social interaction), and boundary (strength) characterize the group dimension.

Bloor , op. cit. (ref. 9), 140.

ibid.

Oldroyd D. R. , “By grid and group divided: Buckland and the English geological community in the early nineteenth century”, Annals of science, xl (1984), 383–93, p. 388.

ibid.

Gross and Rayner , op. cit. (ref. 41), 6.

ibid., 5.