Dodd ’ s S-formulae were consequently both the description and an analysis of social situations by what he termed an equation , S = T ; I ; L ; P , in which the semicolon could stand for any of the mathematical operators - addition , multiplication , and so on . As well as each base letter in the formula being modified by an exponent , and each one could also be complemented by three other corner scripts , the post-subscript designating a class , the pre-subscript designating class intervals , and the pre-superscript designating a case ( Dodd 1942 , 899-902 ), creating a total of 32 different symbols . The exponents , however , were the most formally defined of the corner scripts . Any process in which a societal characteristic changes with time could be written as the S-formula I . T¯ ¹, with different processes involving various characteristics , but all sharing the -1 exponent in relation to T ; Dodd , retaining a little of the physicalist sociological outlook , on this basis referred to all such expressions as a form of " velocity ." The potential sophistication permitted by this notation becomes more apparent when one considers a situation where the rate of growth itself is increasing . In the most general case , the change in a rate of natural increase would be I . T¯ ²; any formula containing T¯ ², in the same physicalist analogy , therefore represents an acceleration in Dodd ’ s terms . Dodd believed that if social phenomena were categorised on the basis of whether or not the formulas for those situations shared the same sequence of exponents underlying patterns would be revealed which were otherwise not apparent ( Dodd 1942 , 42 ) 62 , somewhat analogously to Mendeleev ’ s periodic table in the field of chemistry ( Mendeleev 1869 , 546 ). The analogy with chemistry extends well to the concept of chemical formula and the notation used to describe chemical reactions . These are also shorthands , rather than pure mathematics , but the form nevertheless involves numbers as part of the processes which they describe and constitute the language in which research chemists conceptualise their work , as well as offering a concise description . The sheer complexity of 21 st -century industrial chemistry may never have been developed if chemical reactions had been described in a natural language such as English , as its lack of conciseness obscured the essential commonalities central to the understanding of chemistry . S-theory , or perhaps something based upon it , could conceivably create the possibility of similar breakthroughs in the social sciences .
Reviews in the 1940s and 1950s
Several contemporary reviewers , including Donald Calhoun , warned that it would be inadvisable for sociologists generally to emulate Dodd or adopt his notation . Calhoun noted that Lundberg ' s