Oh, my! It is worth the price of admission for this passage alone.
A Hypothetical Example
Once upon a time, a writer proposed that humanity should be divided into large-eared and small-eared people. The writer suggested that small-eared people do not listen, have lower musical ability, are deficient in the ability to empathize with others, and much more. Because they lack interpersonal skills, small-eared people are also responsible for cruelty and some of the greatest evils in world history. The government of the time endorsed the writer’s ideas and enacted laws that divided children, based on the new concept of earedness, into separate kindergartens and schools. As a consequence, the whole of society was divided into large- and small-eared classes, with separate education, health, and legal systems, and with separate housing and recreational spheres for each group.
Later, and at the time when psychology became an independent discipline, researchers began to test hypotheses regarding earedness with empirical means. They found that several of the assumptions regarding earedness, although not all, had empirical support. More recently, evolutionary psychologists discussed the adaptive advantage of ear size; clinical psychologists used the concept as a broad diagnostic tool; psychologists of religion found that religious founders had disproportionately larger ears than their contemporaries; historians of psychology estimated the large-earedness of psychological pioneers using paintings, photographs, and ear descriptions; and debates as to whether Kant had larger ears than Descartes, or whether Kant’s large-earedness had been overestimated, took place among personality psychologists.
Yet, some criticism of the concept also emerged: Methodologists argued that earedness must be adjusted for by height and gender and that the variable is continuous rather than discontinuous. Other critics argued that earedness is a social construct. However, defenders of the concept pointed out that empirical studies confirm the significance of earedness, that the variable is an excellent predictor of professional success, and that earedness demonstrates high correlations with many other psychological variables. They also pointed out that the average person knows that earedness has always existed and that to deny it would contradict common sense.