Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Words for Critical Citizens #6: nomothetic

nomothetic\nah-muh-THET-ik\
adjective

: relating to, involving, or dealing with abstract, general, or universal statements or laws

"Even the authors that emphasize the existence of cross-cultural differences … acknowledge that a nomothetic characterization of a country cannot apply equally to every member of its population." — From an article by Jaime Bonache et al. in the Journal of Business Research, December 2012

"Moreover, there is the often-incorrect assumption that crimes and offenders are sufficiently similar to be lumped together for aggregate study. In such cases the resulting nomothetic knowledge is not just diluted, it is inaccurate and ultimately misleading." —From Brent E. Turvey's 2011 book Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, Fourth Edition

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