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SBE 2020: Submission Detail
| ID Number: |
64 |
| Title: |
Beyond Essentialist Thinking |
| Lead Author: |
Whalen, Douglas H. |
| Abstract: |
The most revolutionary idea in the past 150 years may be Darwins having taken individual variation as data, rather than having averaged over it (Darwin, 1859; Dennett, 1995). This idea has been slow to be incorporated into behavioral studies, where individual differences are still typically taken as uninteresting noise. The issue is important from two sides: The subject matter is made of variation, and our theories must move toward describing categories as comprised of those variations rather than imposing categories on them. A grand challenge, therefore, is to incorporate this important yet unaccustomed approach into research throughout the social, behavioral and economic sciences, both in the object of study and in the fundamentals of our scientific theories. |
| PDF: |
Whalen_Douglas_64.pdf |
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