Talk:Nomothetic

Greek variant
Is there a Greek variant of "Nomo-", which means naming or name? If it has a root which means both 'law' and 'name'; thus "definition", "assignation" or "rule" particular to a thing.? The enumeration of genus or type, as in the biblical Adam naming the creatures of the earth. Nagelfar (talk) 19:23, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
 * According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "name" derives from Greek onoma, onyma. There was also a Greek word gnomon meaning indicator or pointer.  Is that helpful at all?  I don't really understand the query.  (I don't understand this article either.) Looie496 (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2011 (UTC)


 * It is merely the Greek meaning "law". It has been used and extended in the social sciences, I think, largely through the misuse of Gaussian distributions and a misunderstanding of statistics to mean that which is "normal".  Somewhere along the line the Gaussian distribution, think bell curve, came to be called the normal distribution and was associated in particular with variation in biological systems such as height amongst people.  Statistically, two standard deviations either side of the mean was arbitrarily defined as representing the norm in a Gaussian population while the unfortunate 2.5% in each tail automatically became abnormal.  This is the quantitative nomothetic in the social sciences.


 * Evolution in any system (language, concepts, culture...) is amoral and unthinking; it favors what does not die. This is why egregiously poor thinking and wrong conceptions continue.  They only have to appeal to and/or become beliefs of a few to remain.  If those few happen to be in the front end of a (far more common) power law distribution, then a 'bad' idea, method/practice/custom, or entire system potentially grows according to a power law; that is exponentially, taking on a life of its own.


 * BiosocialPolymath (talk) 02:28, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

Psychology
I think the entire section is highly problematic. First, Jung's archetypes, Esenyck's PEN, and the Big Five are models. The Myers–Briggs (a theory) has been thoroughly discredited as a valid psychometric instrument. It is a great party activity to promote everyone feeling good about themselves. The others have all been validated to various extents. Jung's archetypes, for example, correlate quite well with anthropologic work concerning human universals (see the empirical works of Paul Eckman, Donald Brown, and Chris Boehm). In addition, each is empirically established, data not theory driven. In other words, much less susceptible to many cognitive biases in formulation, therefore more readily testable. The Myers–Briggs suffers the same issues as psychoanalysis; being non-empirical, the loosely developed and ill defined constructs of each readily lend to excessively wild interpretation and repeated ad hoc hypotheses. These are markers of pseudoscience.

Last and most troubling is the conclusory sentence. This completely misconstrues the three legitimate examples cited by strawmanning them then using what Dan Dennett calls a "boom crutch" – in particular, a Goulding of the "rather" variety. This is where "rather" is used to move a reader unawares through a false argument. In this case, that each model set people to be "understood in relation to principle[sic] or norms"(the false assertion) "rather than"(the boom crutch) "individual uniqueness"(the appealing part of the dichotomy opposing the false assertion). This leads any uninformed reader – the very people we want to encourage coming to Wikipedia to learn – to the false conclusion that these psychological ideas are morally objectionable. Make no mistake, a boom crutch, consciously used or not, has at its root the goal of promoting a belief, an ideology, not good thinking or good science. The later provide truths regardless of how those make us feel.

Contrary to the implication, Jung, Esenyck, and the Big Five emphasize individuality within a continuum of empirically validated existence. Each is based in an evolutionary framework where it is understood that "universal" does not constitute an absolute. That is, for something to be humanly universal it is found across populations not necessarily in every individual. In the course of the genomics expansion we've found entirely healthy, functional people with 22 instead of 23 chromosomes. The genome size remains consistent, it has just been repackaged. Their is no biologic principle consistent with the modern synthesis of evolution that requires any set number of chomosomes or genome size in any organism. While 22 chromosomes is not normative, to say that genetics allows these people to be classified as non–human is as asinine as the sentence I am ridiculing. The essence of Jung, Esenyck, or the Big Five cannot reasonably be made to work as the "principle" or "norm" in the construction of the conclusory sentence.

The section needs to be rewritten, better it needs to be deleted. However, I thought it prudent to post my objections first.

BiosocialPolymath (talk) 02:04, 12 February 2019 (UTC)


 * I edited the section to address some of your concerns in your first paragraph that begins I think the entire section is highly problematic. (I agree that Myers-Briggs is not a good example.) However, your subsequent paragraphs suggest that you may not understand how the terms nomothetic and idiographic are commonly used in psychology. There was nothing conceptually wrong with the sentence that you criticized as being a "boom crutch"; it was just giving a simple definition of what nomothetic and idiographic mean in psychology. It could have been better written, but there was no false argument—no argument at all, just a simple definition. The whole article could be rewritten and better sourced (or just redirected to Nomothetic and idiographic, which could itself be improved), but I addressed this particular concern. Biogeographist (talk) 00:34, 8 November 2020 (UTC)