S. S. STEVENS’S ‘LOST’ PAPER OF 1939: “ON THE PROBLEM OF SCALES FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MAGNITUDES”

Abstract

In 1939, S. S. Stevens presented a paper, with the title, “On the problem of scales for the measurement of psychological magnitudes,†to the Fifth International Congress for the Unity of Science, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Stevens’s paper, together with several others delivered at the Congress, was scheduled for publication in Volume 9 of The Journal for Unified Science (Erkenntnis). Copies of those papers were printed for members of the Congress as though they were published, and a few of the papers, including Stevens’s, were so cited later. But The Journal for Unified Science (Erkenntnis) ended with volume 8, volume 9 did not appear, and Stevens’s paper was never published. A copy of Stevens’s paper, as printed for members of the Congress, was found at Harvard’s Psychology Library and is hereby being made more widely available: Nearly 70 years after it was written, Stevens’s paper now appears in these Proceedings.