Originator of the labels for ‘left’ and ‘right’ with regards to the spectrum of political position.
He called one pole the Left-Systematists and the other end of the spectrum the Right Systematists (today we know these as Left- and Right-Winger)
He applied this to a long term inductive study which was coordinated through Harvard. The study was a general survey, handed out to tens of thousands of academics though various universities around the world.
Induction here of course presents the complementary approach of Deduction where one begins with a thesis (and its assumptions) and deduces consequences for which we then either find evidence to support it and test it, to potentially discover evidence to the contrary and refute it.
In an inductive study aims to simply probe in the most neutral and open way, unaffected by preconceived ideas, ideally eliminating bias.
Starting from this data-driven approach Parsons detected that the collected answers appear to cluster around 5 distinct nodal points.
The participants with in any given cluster seemed to provide similar answers, categorically different from any other Node.
This then of course gave rise to the question, what makes one individual end up in one cluster (and its views) as opposed to another?
A question which Parsons passed on to Potter, who eventually came up with Potter’s Box.
Danny later identified two additional nodal points which Parsons and Potter missed initially (raising the total to 7).
2nd Paradigm Worldview
Since the spectrum spans between two poles (left to right) one could argue that this in fact is a particular point of view from within the Spectrum itself.
To present an issue in terms of two complementary points of view is of course natural for a dualistic mind.
At the same time the duality present in language, cognition, and more generally dualistic thought is emblematic to the 2nd Paradigm Worldview:
Opposing teams in sports and politics may easily distract from the underlying (deeper) unity which is the basis for the two opposing camps to be related in the first place.
Even in the case of George Boole and his Laws of Thought his wife asserted that he was deeply influenced by ancient Indian philosophical and logical traditions.