Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco: Chandler, 1964), pp. 258-262.

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Styles of Thinking

• Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry (San
  Francisco Chandler, 1964), pp. 258-262.

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• The fashion in question concerns one of the
  dimensions of cognitive style--roughly speaking,
  the use which is made of formal logic and
  mathematics. Note that this is a question of the
  style of thought, not merely of the style of
  presentation Plato and Galileo both wrote
  dialogues, but with very different cognitive
  styles. Yet thought and its expression are surely
  not wholly unrelated to one another, and how
  scientific findings are formulated for
  incorporation into the body of knowledge often
  reflects stylistic traits of the thinking behind
  them. . . .

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Theories Reflect Kaplan's Levels of Thinking

• Literary
• Academic
• Eristic
• Symbolic
• Postulational
• Formal

• Analytic is the logical character of scientific
  statements
• Synthetic is the empirical character of
  scientific statements

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The literary style. This cognitive style is
likely to be occupied with individuals,
particular sets or sets of events, case studies,
clinical findings, and the like. A plot is
unfolded--a behavior sequence is disclosed to
have a certain significance. . . . A person, a
movement, or a whole culture is interpreted in
terms of the specific purposes of the actors,
rather than in terms of the abstract and general
theories of the scientist's own explanatory
scheme. Examples Kenneth Burke, Sigmund
Freud, Marshall McLuhan, Lester Thonssen A.
Craig Baird
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The academic style. This is much more abstract
and general than the literary style. There is
some attempt to be precise, but it is verbal
rather than operational. Ordinary words are used
in special senses, to constitute a special
vocabulary. . . . The materials dealt with tend
to be ideational rather than observational data,
and their treatment tends to be highly
theoretical, if not, indeed, purely speculative.
System is introduced by way of great
"principles", applied over and over to specific
cases, which illustrate the generalization rather
than serve as proofs of it. . . . Examples Hugh
Duncan, some of Burke, some of Leon Festinger,
John Stewart, Irving Janis, Jack Gibb
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The eristic style. Here there is a strong
interest in proof, and of specific propositions,
rather than, as in the literary and academic
styles, the aim only of exhibiting the cognitive
possibilities in certain broad perspectives on
the subject-matter. Experimental and statistical
data become important. Examples Gerald
Miller, Martin Fishbein, Robert F. Bales, James
McCroskey
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The symbolic style. The subject-matter is
conceptualized from the outset in mathematical
terms. Both problems and solutions are
formulated, therefore, in a more or less
artificial language. . . . Measurement is
important, as providing the content for the
mathematical forms which are employed.
Statistical data do not serve, as in the eristic
style, only as a body of evidence they are
processed so as to generate new hypotheses, and
even new patterns of conceptualization. In this
processing, computers and other instruments, both
physical and ideational, are likely to play a
major role. The symbolic style is characteristic
of mathematical economics, psychometrics and
sociometrics, game-theoretic treatments of
political problems, probabilistic approaches to
learning theory, and so on. Examples Milton
Rokeach game-theoretic models, John Thibaut
Harold Kelley
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The postulational style. This has many of the
characteristics of the symbolic style, of which,
indeed, it could be regarded as a special
variant. It differs from the symbolic style in
general only as logic differs from mathematics.
The validity of proof is at the focus of
attention here, rather than the content of the
propositions which occur at the various steps.
Emphasis is on the system as a whole, bound
together by the chains of logical derivation.
Synthetic elements but emphasizing analytic
properties. Examples Claude Shannon, Charles
Osgood (congruity hypothesis)
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The formal style. This is very close to the
postulational style, and indeed, presupposes the
latter. The difference is that here the key terms
are not given any interpretation there is no
reference to any specific empirical content. Pure
analytic. Examples geometry, algebra,
calculus, statistics
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Kaplans Styles of Thinking
Postulational Empirical loadings
Formal MathNo empirical loadings
Increasing Analytic Rigor
Eristic theories
Academic theories
Literary theories
Increasing Synthetic Rigor
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Kaplans Styles of Thinking
William Hays
Claude Shannon
Charles Osgood
Postulational Empirical loadings
Formal MathNo empirical loadings
Thibaut Kelley
Increasing Analytic Rigor
Gerald Miller
Eristic theories
Hugh Duncan
Academic theories
Leon Festinger
Literary theories
Kenneth Burke
Increasing Synthetic Rigor