By pressing the scientific claims of individuality, Allport and the Murphys signaled their dissatisfaction with the current state of scientific knowledge-seeking in two ways. The study of individuality was first of all justified as an end in itself, in order to right the lop-sided view of nature that they believed scientists had produced by ignoring particulars in favor of universals. But promoting the study of that which is “individual” as a scientific priority was more than a move to supplement already dominant views, for talk of individuality simultaneously represented other challenges as well: to intellectual practices that minimized diversity, broke apart wholes, feared the taint of the subjective, and banished qualities in favor of quantities. As a symbolic rallying point for those who wished to dissent from the status quo in the sciences, a commitment to foregrounding individuality signified a resistance to perpetuating images of scientific method held dear by science's elite.

The concept of universality possesses a status in the Western intellectual tradition that the idea of particularity lacks. The practices and rhetoric of the sciences incorporate a distaste for the investigation of singularities as singularities, subscribing to the belief that such a path offers little hope of obtaining secure and certain knowledge. As philosopher Jorge Gracia remarks, unlike scholarly attention to “universals,” “discussions of the correlative notion of individuality are not abundant and, by comparison with the number and depth of treatments on universals, may even be considered scarce.”