322 THE MISMEASURE OF MANmind" may have real existence as modes of truly universal thought.
Burt managed to espouse three contradictory views about the
nature of factors: mathematical abstractions for human conven-
ience; real entities lodged in physical properties of the brain; and
real categories of thought in a higher, hierarchically organized
realm of psychic reality. Spearman had not been very daring as a
reifier; he never ventured beyond the Aristotelian urge for locating
idealized abstractions within physical bodies themselves. Burt, at
least in part, soared beyond into a Platonic realm above and beyond
physical bodies. In this sense, Burt was the boldest, and literally
most extensive, reifier of them all.Burt and the political uses of g
Factor analysis is usually performed on the correlation matrix
of tests. Burt pioneered an "inverted" form of factor analysis, math-
ematically equivalent to the usual style, but based on correlation
between persons rather than tests. If each vector in the usual style
(technically called R-mode analysis) represents the scores of several
people on a single test, then each vector in Burt's inverted style
(called Q-mode analysis) reflects the results of several tests for a
single person. In other words, each vector now represents a person
rather than a test, and the correlation between vectors measures
the degree of relationship between individuals.
Why did Burt go to such lengths to develop a technique math-
ematically equivalent to the usual form, and generally more cum-
bersome and expensive to apply (since an experimental design
almost always includes more people than tests)? The answer lies in
Burt's uncommon focus of interest. Spearman, and most other fac-
torists, wished to learn about the nature of thought or the structure
of mind by studying correlations between tests measuring different
aspects of mental functioning. Cyril Burt, as official psychologist of
the London County Council (1913-1932), was interested in rank-
ing pupils. Burt wrote in an autobiographical statement (1961, p.
56): "[Sir Godfrey] Thomson was interested primarily in the
description of the abilities tested and in the differences between
those abilities; I was interested rather in the persons tested and in
the differences between them" (Burt's italics).
Comparison, for Burt, was no abstract issue. He wished to
assess pupils in his own characteristic way, based upon two guiding