The Group Method of Analysis1

A paper that sets out with a paradoxical title can hardly be expected to invite one's confidence unless we can somehow get square with this initial misnomer. An analysis presupposes, of course, the isolation and examination of a part or element representing the structure of a system, combination or group of elements. But biologically, a group represents a synthesis and only its parts are susceptible of analysis. So that a group method of analysis is of its nature self-contradictory. One could as consistently speak of a synthetic method of analysis as of a group method of analysis. And yet there is in fact the group material to be confronted and there is, as I see it, only the analytic method of confronting it. And so, in attempting to reconcile processes that are so obviously opposed—the one group or synthetic, the other individual or analytic—there is clearly some consistent explanation called for. It is this explanation for which it is difficult for me to find words. If, however, as far as may be, you will participate with me in this endeavor, I think that we may together arrive at some common interpretation that will reconcile this seeming contradiction—a contradiction that has for a long time, I confess, been too little clear in my own mind.

I think we do not realize to what extent we have come to employ the term group or combination in an entirely artificial and conventional sense. The landscape gardener arranges a group of trees, the historian a group of chronological events. The educator will form a group of students, the sociologist a group of welfare workers. There