ABSTRACT
Quantitative methods enable a departure from the persistent, often unconscious view of intellectuals as relatively isolated and even socially unattached. Statistics offer a means to move beyond individual contingencies and toward a more relational or structural view of the intellectual world. Especially since the 1990s, quantitative methods have been imported into the study of intellectual life and production from different subdisciplines. The statistical approach requires a very precise and homogeneous set of criteria to delimit the population under study. In the database spreadsheet, individuals were entered horizontally and variables vertically. The sociology of intellectuals or of ideas in the United States, most of which is qualitative, evolved in a distinctly different way than in France. English-speaking researchers were also significantly influenced by the sociology of scientific knowledge. Regression comprises a set of statistical methods used to analyze relationships that can connect different variables.
