Since the seventeenth century modern science has emphasized the strengths of quantitatively based experimentation and research. The success of quantitative research in the so-called hard sciences, especially physics and chemistry, stimulated attempts to extend quantitative work into the social or human sciences, where its application was somewhat problematic. A countermovement with ethical dimensions developed during the nineteenth century as increased attempts at exploration and colonization resulted in efforts to document "native" cultures in qualitative ways; that countermovement contributed to the formalization of methods in anthropology. In the twentieth century qualitative methods were adopted in sociology; many of the applied disciplines, such as nursing, education, and business; and human and rural ecology, geography, and engineering. By the 1970s qualitative research and qualitative inquiry had become the rubrics of a reformist movement in the social sciences, with professional associations, journals, and basic reference works appearing into the twenty-first...