文档介绍：Economic History Review, 62, 4 (2009), pp. 893–925
Turning qualitative into quantitative
evidence: a well-used method made
explicit1
By A. W. CARUS and SHEILAGH OGILVIE
Many historians reject quantitative methods as inappropriate to understanding past
societies. This article argues that no sharp distinction between qualitative and quan-
titative concepts can be drawn, as almost any concept used to describe a past society
is implicitly quantitative. Many recent advances in understanding have been achieved
by deriving quantitative evidence from qualitative evidence, using the two dialecti-
cally, and indexing them against other quantitative findings from the same popula-
tion. We show that this triangulation method can be extended to many apparently
qualitative sources. Despite its esses, the potential of turning qualitative into
quantitative evidence has only just begun to be exploited.
ocial and economic historians live fortably these days. They are under
Spressure from two opposed sides. On the one side are economists, who want
everything formalized and have little time for any but quantitative evidence (pref-
erably very large, homogeneous datasets). And on the other side is the historical
profession, which increasingly rejects quantitative methods altogether. How to
mediate between these hostile and mutually prehending tribes?ehr_486 893..925
We address this question here in two ways. First, we make explicit a long
practised but never codified historical method that bridges this gap in a way both
sides could live with. And second, we ask how historians devise their conceptual
frameworks: what do they mean by the concepts they apply to past societies? By
considering the two opposed sides from this perspective—as different ways of
shaping concepts—we hope to show that the tension between them is largely
spurious. In fact, we will argue, understanding past societies always requires both
approaches, and we illustrate this by re