¹ Paul F. Lazarsfeld, et al., The People's Choice (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1944).

² We can also consider it in relation to its users—the pragmatic dimension—which I am not here considering. These are the three dimensions of meaning which Charles M. Morris has systematized in his “Foundations of the Theory of Signs,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Volume I: Number 2. University of Chicago Press, 1938.

³ To sort out the dimensions of a macroscopic concept requires us to elaborate it syntactically, while keeping our eyes open for semantic indices for each implication so elaborated. To translate each of these points into molecular terms requires us to trace the hierarchy of inference down to single, clear-cut variables. In assertions using macroscopic concepts, we must watch for whether or not the assertion (1) states a proposition, or (2) unlocks an implication. The guide-rule is whether the statement involves one empirical factor or at least two. If it involves only one factor, then it simply spells out” or specifies one of the conceptual implications of that one factor; its meaning is syntactical. If the assertion involves two factors, it may be a proposition, a statment of a relation which can be true or false; its meaning is semantical.

⁴ In either style, one may of course start with a simple declaration of descriptive intent, finding more precisely-put problems as one goes along. In either style, too, the assembly of stray facts without any general significance or interconnection may be found; the new (molecular) ideography is no different in this respect from the older macroscopic kind. Both are composed of details not connected with any problem and entailing no evident syntactical implications.

⁵ The difference here is not a difference in the general logic of explanation: in both styles of work a third factor (or fourth or fifth factor) is appealed to in the explanation of some relation observed.

The explanatory intent of the macroscopic style is to locate the behavior to be explained within a structural totality or a cultural milieu; it finds its explanation in this “meaningful location”—which means that it seeks to interpret in the terms of a highly intricate, interrelated complex of variables.

The explanatory intent of the molecular student is to break down the behavior of the individuals involved into component parts and to find the explanation in the association of further simplified attributes of these individuals.

⁶ All illustrative facts and figures in this paper are products of the imagination.

⁷ In some research shops, the term “bright” is frequently applied when molecular facts or relations are cogently explained by macroscopic suppositions (II).

When further molecular variables, whose meaning is generalized very far—i.e., stretched—are brought in to explain, and they work, the result may be referred to as a “cute” table (III).

I mention this only to indicate that there is slowly emerging a shop language to cover the procedures I am trying to assert.

⁸ For simplicity of presentation, I skip here the causal links between, e.g., B and A implied in the hypothesis.

⁹ Of course, by the time we had gone through the three steps outlined, surely Hitler would have us in his clutches; but that is an irrelevant incident, and of no concern or consequence to the designer and methodologist of research, however inconvenient it might be to the research worker.