The Disputed Legacy of The Comparative Method
The conflict over mass comparison can be seen as a dispute over the legacy of the comparative method, developed in the 19th century, primarily by Danish and German linguists, in the study of Indo-European languages.
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Famous quotes containing the words legacy, comparative and/or method:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Argument is conclusive ... but ... it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.... For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns ... his hearer’s mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it ... that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”
—Roger Bacon (c. 1214–1294)