Volume 2, 1983
Sektions-Vorträge I - Résumés des sections I - Section Papers I
Tadeusz Pawlowski
Pages 1018-1025
The Limits of Measurement and of Mathematization in the Social Sciences
The results achieved in the natural sciences due to their mathematisation encouraged many to apply mathematics also in disciplines traditionally regarded as unamenable to mathematical treatment. Various critics consider the use of measurement in such disciplines as unsound. They hold any sentenoe which states relations between sociological or humanistic quantities as only spuriously meaningful. Is this criticism justified? Under what conditions can measurement be fruitfully applied outside the domain of the exact sciences? What does it mean to measure something? These problems are given consideration.