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Historiometrics integrates history with psychometrics, and applies quantitative methods to historic personalities and events to test significant nomothetic hypotheses. In a historiometric analysis of an artistic epoch and its metamorphosis over time, variables widely linked to artistry are selected in advance. The analysis proceeds with the collection of data on artists, their artworks, and relevant historical variables. The data are then coded and quantified. Typically this requires biographical scales (artistic precocity, available mentors, vanguard involvement), personality scales (psychodynamics, traits, psychopathology), creativity scales (innovation, productivity, fame), and Zeitgeist scales (amount, type, and rate of artistic, intellectual, and sociopolitical ferment). Artistic products are evaluated as well, in content (subject matter) and form (color/line, indistinct/clear, recessive/planar). Interrator reliability is checked and computerized statistical analyses are performed (multiple regression, factor analysis, and/or time-series analysis). The historiometric approach yields precise statements as to what variables facilitate successful artistry and/or effect cultural change. In addition to precision, historiometrics enables us to compare historical
Dean Keith Simon ton is Professor of Psychology, University of California at Davis.
periods characterized by fertile paradigm shifts, such as those surrounding the apex of Greek civilization, the Renaissance, and Modernist epochs. In this, we can see what general principles are at work in paradigm shifts, transcending the particulars of time and place.