Technicways in American Civilization: Notes on a Method of Measuring Their Point of Origin

Abstract

HIS report is an exercise in the methodology of sociological research, intended to show how a student adopts a general frame of reference related to his own knowledge and interests, delimits the field of study, states his problem, locates sources, and chooses a method. The study in folk sociology used to illustrate this process was designed to work out a simple quantitative method of describing the growth pattern of the technicways and locating their point of origin in time. By a discussion of the logical assumptions underlying the growth curve used to describe the pattern of change for our data we try to show how a more precise quantitative study may help to interpret cumulative processes of cultural change in terms of sociological meaning. It is suggested that the use of the statistical method is worth the student's labor not primarily as a tool to summarize a vast field of data conveniently, but as a way of interpretation and understanding which offers an approach to the central problem of folk sociology-the place of value and motivation in the dynamics of folk-regional society. The general frame of reference for the study is given in Howard W. Odum's hypothesis' of the process of societal