Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
Cogn Neuropsychol. 2011 Oct;28(7):445-50; discussion 515-20. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2012.671766.
Two ways of dealing with variation in biological populations are discussed. The first is referred to as the natural state model, an approach originated by Aristotle. The second emerged when biologists understood that lawful variation could be ascribed to an entire population of individuals as an organizational unit. This article establishes that the emphasis on single-case studies is driven by assumptions on the nature of variation that conform exactly to the natural state model. By contrast, the alternative case-series approach is consistent with population thinking in modern biology.
本文讨论了两种处理生物群体变异的方法。第一种方法被称为自然状态模型，由亚里士多德首创。第二种方法出现在生物学家理解到有规律的变异可以归因于作为一个组织单元的整个个体群体时。本文确立了对单病例研究的重视是由与自然状态模型完全一致的关于变异本质的假设所驱动的。相比之下，替代的病例系列方法与现代生物学中的群体思维是一致的。
