P-Technique: A New Statistical Device for Analysing Functional Unities in the Intact Organism

The methods of science lie in a continuum, at one end of which is complete experimental control, in which all significant conditions beyond those of the independent variable are held constant while changes in a dependent variable are related to con- trolled changes in the independent variable. This we may call the classical experimental method of the physical sciences. At the other end of the continuum we have the experimental design, in which practically nothing is controlled or controllable, but in which observations are made on a number of variables representing natural processes which occur in the organism in situ.