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Edwin Grant Dexter: an early researcher in human behavioral biometeorology

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Abstract

Edwin Grant Dexter (1868–1938) was one of the first researchers to study empirically the effects of specific weather conditions on human behavior. Dexter (1904) published his findings in a book, Weather influences. The author’s purposes in this article were to (1) describe briefly Dexter’s professional life and examine the historical contexts and motivations that led Dexter to conduct some of the first empirical behavioral biometeorological studies of the time, (2) describe the methods Dexter used to examine weather-behavior relationships and briefly characterize the results that he reported in Weather influences, and (3) provide a historical analysis of Dexter’s work and assess its significance for human behavioral biometeorology. Dexter’s Weather influences, while demonstrating an exemplary approach to weather, health, and behavior relationships, came at the end of a long era of such studies, as health, social, and meteorological sciences were turning to different paradigms to advance their fields. For these reasons, Dexter’s approach and contributions may not have been fully recognized at the time and are, consequently, worthy of consideration by contemporary biometeorologists.

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Notes

  1. Although nothing exists in Dexter’s writing or in his personal correspondences from the University of Illinois that directly reveals his political sentiments, the review of his life and work in this article suggests that Dexter was a Progressive. Dexter came of age and launched his career at the height of the Progressive era in America (1870 to 1920, according to McGerr 2005). The nature of his work, which involved gathering of both physical and social science data to understand and inform education, government, and commerce also is consistent with the Progressive mind-set. Dexter’s son, E.B. Dexter (1988, p. 1) wrote that, “Father was Dean of the School of Education and at age 38 was one of the leading progressive educators in America.” Finally, Dexter’s appointment to the University of Puerto Rico by Theodore Roosevelt and his long history of public service in education, the Red Cross, and the Veterans Administration convey both his humanitarian and Progressive commitments.

  2. The choices to study weather influences in Denver and New York appeared to be based primarily on practical considerations given Dexter’s work at Colorado State Normal School, followed by his 2-year stay in New York while completing his doctoral studies with Cattell. It was somewhat fortuitous for Dexter that the climates and geography (i.e., elevation, proximity to the ocean) for Denver and New York were different and thus added variability to meteorological parameters Dexter investigated. Given the scope and size of the variables Dexter examined, it seems obvious that the research in Weather influences was started well before Dexter began pursuing his doctoral studies at Columbia University.

  3. The author compiled Table 1 based upon the results that Dexter reported in Chaps. VII–XIII; no such table appears in Dexter’s original work. The purpose of reporting Dexter’s results in Table 1 and in the narrative of this article is to describe his analytic methods and to characterize his work within the history of biometeorology.

  4. Who were the people who provided reviews of Conduct and the weather and, later, Weather influences? Francis F. Browne was a poet, critic, and editor who lived in Chicago. He was the editor of The Dial from 1880 to 1913, which was a literary review of modernist literature. Willis A. Dewey was a homeopathic physician from Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was the editor and proprietor of The Medical Century journal. Norman Lockyer was an astronomer and was the founder and first editor of the journal Nature. Lockyer and French chemist Pierre Janssen discovered helium. Hugh R. Mill was a Scottish geographer and meteorologist. He was interested in the establishment of meteorology as a science. William E. Plummer was the director of the Liverpool Observatory and a reader in astronomy at Liverpool University. Plummer increased work in meteorology at the observatory and passed along information that he collected to local officials. George F. Shrady was a practicing physician from New York. Shrady founded and edited the journal Medical Record in 1866. Thomas L. Stedman was a New York practicing physician with an interest in geography who coedited the Medical Record with George Shrady.

  5. The author performed a citation analysis to identify and characterize the sources that cited Conduct and the weather and Weather influences. There were two purposes for the citation analysis, the first of which was to document that since the publication of Weather influences in 1904, researchers and writers have continued to cite Dexter’s work and have found regular uses for it. Second, the results of this citation analysis may provide a rough comparative context for other researchers who are interested in documenting the relative influences of early twentieth century writers. Unlike contemporary citation analyses or assessments of impact, the publication of Weather influences occurred at a time when information was disseminated and incorporated much more slowly. In addition, for such an early publication date, there are no comprehensive sources to consult in assessing subsequent citations to Weather influences. Thus, the following sources were consulted: PsycINFO, Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, MEDLINE, JSTOR, the Reader’s Guide Retrospective Index, Google Scholar, and Google Books to identify as many sources as possible. From 1899 to 2010, the literature search yielded 74 citations to Conduct and the weather (38 books or book chapters and 36 journal articles) and 228 citations to Weather influences (156 books or book chapters and 72 journal articles). Few authors cited both works as the final lists of citations that contained only 12 entries in common (16 % of Conduct and the weather and 5 % of Weather influences). Approximately 84 % of the citations involved the subjects of criminology (19.7 %), psychology (16.6 %), sociology (16.2 %), biometeorology/health (14.0 %), geography (7.9 %), meteorology/climatology (4.8 %), and education (4.4 %). The citations to Weather influences were the highest in the four decades following its publication. From the decade to 1960 to the present time, there have been approximately 15 citations per decade to Weather influences. From 2010 to the present time, there are one or two citations per year to the book, on average. Although these quantities are very modest or even underwhelming by contemporary standards, the data do attest to the early importance of Weather influences and the conceptual or historical value that present-day researchers find in Dexter’s writing.

  6. Although Huntington cited Dexter’s work, no record could be found in the archives of Huntington or Dexter that the two men ever corresponded with each other. Huntington was a prolific writer who was given to creating big ideas and sweeping theories that, upon closer examination, were found lacking in the careful thought or empirical rigor that was needed to support them. This style of scholarship was one of the reasons for Huntington’s stormy on-and-off relationship with Yale University (Fleming 1998). In this context, it is easy to see how Huntington may have appropriated Weather influences as support for his much stronger climatic determinism. In his 1926 review of his work on Weather influences, Dexter spoke of effects of weather on people and seemed to distance himself from a study of climatic effects. Similarly, within the book itself, Dexter never used the verb “determined” or “determines” in connection with weather-behavior relationships, although he frequently used “influenced” and “influences” to characterize weather-behavior relationships. Such terminology suggests a much softer and far less deterministic position than that adopted by Huntington.

  7. How did Cleveland Abbe come to write the forward to Weather influences? No record of correspondences between Dexter and Abbe could be found in the archives of either person. Cleveland Abbe, however, regularly corresponded with Dexter’s advisor at Columbia University, James McKeen Cattell. As the first person to hold a scientist and professor position with the US Weather Bureau, Abbe was very much interested in developing and promoting the new science of meteorology in the USA and Europe (Abbe 1895). Abbe also was interested in the educational preparation of university students for work in the new field. Because Cattell was the editor of Science and two other widely read scientific journals of the time, Abbe was very much interested in publicizing the science and training associated with meteorology. For example, Abbe (1894) wrote to Cattell:

    “As I have been particularly interested in maintaining the dignity and importance of one of the new branches of scientific work I am rather disappointed to find that you have not yet recognized it as yet in the list of sciences specified in your editorial committee. I am myself especially devoted to the success of the American Meteorological Journal and our Monthly Weather Review as representing a special science; but am not insensible to the value of a general journal that shall give us in a few words early notice of interesting discoveries and investigations….I shall take pleasure in communicating to “Science” a short article on the needs of meteorology.”

    Abbe (1900) expressed similar sentiments in a letter to Cattell nearly six years later:

    “SCIENCE has certainly exerted a widely increasing and excellent influence as an institution for the advancement of science and the dissemination of an intelligent interest in all branches of knowledge. We desire to cooperate as heartily as possible with you in the cultivation of meteorology and cognate subjects.”

    Thus, is it both likely and very understandable that Cattell could have brokered Abbe’s contribution to Weather influences. Abbe knew of Dexter’s (1899a, b) work because Dexter (1899b, 1903) published a synopsis of his dissertation in Abbe’s Monthly Weather Review and also published a corresponding article in the same forum just ahead of the release of Weather influences. Moreover, Abbe (1883), like Dexter, was interested in the effects of air temperature and humidity upon human activities and the experiences of these variables as “exhilarating” or “depressing.” By way of coincidences, Truman Abbe, the second eldest son of Cleveland, finished his medical studies at Columbia and graduated at the same ceremony as Dexter in 1899. The names of both students are listed on the graduation program for Columbia that year.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Dr. Bernard Mergen for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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    Alan E. Stewart

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Stewart, A.E. Edwin Grant Dexter: an early researcher in human behavioral biometeorology. Int J Biometeorol 59, 745–758 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0888-3

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