Is the World Quantifiable?
Mathematics is a formal science, and as such, studies only ideal objects, so that by maintaining its existence only in the world of ideas, moving away from the physical and material plane, we can only say that it is perfect, because there is no possible error in its procedure. Mathematics itself does not admit errors.
This degree of perfection has led humanity to try to extrapolate the mathematics from idea to practice, trying to imitate its excellence in our world. But this perception is misleading, because we must remember, as Plato said, that things are perfect in the intelligible world and imperfect in the sensible, and in trying to take mathematics to the physical and material world we will find its degeneration.
The materialists and scientistic (not to be confused with scientists), insist on a position that is increasingly popular; believe that reality is only that which can be measured, so that quantitative techniques try to reduce reality to numbers, and of course ignore everything that is, by nature, unquantifiable, or at best try to quantify it.
On the contrary, I dare to say, in fact, that nothing in the material plane is quantifiable, absolutely nothing, the only thing that can be quantified are the ideal representations of matter, but not the matter itself, and to avoid getting into cumbersome and unintelligible concepts, I will try to explain myself more precisely with examples.
If you have a couple of apples in your house, you can take two and see them. You will notice that they are not exactly the same, they differ in size, shape and color, and I will even dare to say that they probably differ, although slightly, in smell and taste. These are ideally represented as equals, although they are not, and in the ideal plane would be represented as two, although they certainly are not, because they are different, ergo, can't be two of the same.
If we had to distribute those apples equally between the two of us, on the ideal plane, you should give me any of those two apples indifferently and we would be in perfect equality, but by doing the same on the material plane we find that the apples are not equal so there is only a fictitious equality, an illusion, properly called ideal equality.
Of course, if we only have to divide a couple of apples between the two of us, the problem is not important, because we can sacrifice the precision of the equation and admit this small margin of error. But as we increase the proportions these errors will begin to become larger and more evident, and mathematical perfection will be only an illusion.
Let's suppose now that we have to equally distribute 100 apples again between the two of us, in theory, each one should keep 50 apples. But in doing this, we would not be equally distributing the apples, because these, as we clarified before, are not exactly the same. If I want to be a little more precise I may use a weight, and divide the 100 apples so that in weight the same amount is given to both people. But even then there could be rebuttals. One of the subjects in question (probably you), could complain that their apples look less red than those of the other, or that they smell less, or that they are less tasty, or juicy, and a lot of other things that can not be quantified.
Thus, the larger the proportions of the operation, the greater the differences, because there is really no precision in the application of mathematics to the material world. Mathematics as a formal science is ideally perfect, but not materially.
In such a way that any postulate that affirms the application of mathematical principles to the material world, being this unquantifiable, although it may very well seem logical in the theory, it will not be, and will be totally wrong in practice.
If I affirm that human beings are all equal, it would be more than wrong, because under no aspect they are; they think and act, besides that they look different. The only thing that is the same is the "idea of man". That is, my statement would be ideally correct and materially incorrect, or in a simplified form; it would be right in theory but not in practice.
So when we say that there are 7 billion people on the planet we are reducing the human, which in reality is such a different thing from each other because there are no two humans that are the same, to a number. Those who say that we are all equal, are right only while the human is part of a formula, but this only happens in our mind, because in reality there are not two humans who are, think, or behave the same, so we can't say that there are 7 billion equals, but we can only say that there are 7 billion variables. Again, they would be right in theory, but not in practice.
To conclude I will note that although many things that I said may seem insignificant at first sight, because no one is interested in pinpoint accuracy when it comes to distributing apples or giving a liberal speech, the words I have mentioned make a lot of sense. This is where we can understand why all the systems that seek to plan society or the economy will see a resounding failure, and in these cases if a greater degree of accuracy is necessary.
The economic, social or governmental systems, which reduce the human and their actions to a number, accept premises that are totally wrong, and as such, their results will be catastrophic.
The economy for example, contrary to what many people think, does not have anything to do with numbers, and those who are familiar with the Austrian School or the Salamanca School will agree with me. The economy has to do with human actions and therefore is unquantifiable, and at the same time, impossible to plan. The same goes for society. The variables are so many and so complex that the only way to try to make a plan work is by suppressing them.
That's why we see that the result of systems like the Marxist, which seeks to plan the economy, will always be the simplification of production, to reduce material variables, and the total demise of culture, morals, custom, and any other ideal concept, to reduce the ideal variables. And even in these cases, the result will never be perfect.
The reduction of everything to the quantifiable, the reduction of everything to the calculable, the reduction of everything to the numbers, is a simple mental trap, it seems logical and scientific but it is not, on the contrary, it is illogical and scientistic.
Mathematics serves to simplify the world and help us to understand complex problems more easily, that can not be denied, but to believe that this simplification is the reality is a regrettable mistake.
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While sympathizing with your general conclusion @vieira, about how reality is reduced to binary code at the cost of our humanity, I disagree with the argument. Is the world quantifiable? you ask. Yes it is - it must be, and - what's more - I should want it to be. Let me explain.
If reality were not material, thus sensual and thus measurable, it would not have objectivity. The value of objective reality I'm sure we all can agree. In a nutshell: If not objective, then is action meaningful? Meaning may be felt subjectively; however, it is because subjective experience can affect and effect action that is has meaning - and only in so far as the action transforms the objective reality.
And if not objective, should we even talk of a common world, a world of men, where actors engage with each other, changing the conditions in which they act, which gives to their lives meaning? In fact there would be no common world to speak of. The whole of existence would be subjective. Indeed, there would be no "in fact."
You say the abstractions we use to understand reality are not reality and actually distort reality. You say this is a particular issue for quantification. But this is understood. Understood - how else is the world intelligible except by abstraction? Are ideas not impactful on the material reality? They must have some measure of reality, b/c they do.
The world is not all numbers for sure. Yet even so, reality very much is quantifiable. In fact physical reality is by definition measurable. It is when we talk of the metaphysical that reality becomes numerically incalculable and a new calculus, a new value governs: which is innumerable, subjective and paradoxically primal: moral meaning.
But morality is, again, meaningless if un-actionable, if ethically impracticable, for the very reason that the world is the site of action. It is through action that meaning is created. It is in objective reality that the world exists.
You see thus how I believe the world is not all numbers, yet is largely quantifiable.
I'd say that the largest part of existence is a subjective one.
Take Einsteins view of reality. He talked about timespace. As people on earth do not live in the same time spaces - some still live in tribes in a jungle, others believe in God and so on - they are stuck in different time loops, don't they? The reality of a tribes man differs very much from my and your reality, no? It's because of delays in development from one group of people to the other group of people. As Viera puts it this counts as well for individuals. Do you have siblings? Then your perception of your parents differs from the perception of your siblings towards your parents.
Alan Watts asked some children: "What is a thing?" And after getting answers like: "red", "fast", "thick", "hard", "soft", one nine year old girl said: "A thing is a noun."
Can we agree that objects all are nouns?
Which meaning you give to a noun cannot only stem from quantification alone but also from qualifying an object. Giving it a meaning. Meaning-giving stems from forming a consensus upon an object. I need at least two people who give meaning to an object, otherwise this meaning wouldn't come alive.
To make myself clear I use an extreme: An objective reality would only exist if all people on earth would form consensus about it. This never will be the case as people constantly die and are born. To form a total consensus we not only would have to be born at the same time, we also would have to die at the same time. Not only that, we would have to occupy the same space, i.e. live under the same climatic conditions, speak the same language, eat the same food, get sick from the same diseases etc.
Quantification takes up already a vast space of my current reality (economics, education, medicine, politics, you name it). Statements about the quality of reality are also used inflationary but actually taken quantifications to express quality. Which is not the same.
Do you suggest that we quantify objects? Or do you see that also critical? I am not sure about this from your comment ...
Quantification, I'd say, is a reality for many of us and continues to go on. But we also feel that something is foul about that, don't we?
I'm sensing a bit of slippage going on between quantifiability and objectivity. Quality, yes, also is a a part of existence. But not only of subjective experience. We can speak of quality objectively.
We really can - we do, though you apparently think objective reality cannot exist except in theory. If there was no objectivity how could we communicate. We couldn't. I would be a mental fabrication of yours. It's insulting. I assure you I'm not.
Experience of existence can be felt entirely subjectively, true. That's rather narcissistic, don't you think?, and not exactly reflective of existence as such, for esp. if one is just mind, there is a big wide world beyond him, bigger and wider than that spark of consciousness in his little brain.
To experience quality, I refer to an object, of course. I say: "This coffee is of excellent quality" and I mean the object "coffee" and its good taste, "my subjective sensual impression" of it. The one who says this is a subject, namely "I". That is why I said that most of (my) life is of a subjective nature. Because at first I always experience the world from my next level: myself. I'm closest to my body after all. ;-) This is not meant to be judgmental, but merely an experience that all people have in common. Otherwise I would have to change into someone else's body quickly to use his tongue to taste the coffee.
That's everyday business.
Your thought that my subjective reality prevents me from not considering you as my invention: where does it come from?
The insulting thing in it would only be there if I meant it insulting. Your rating "insulting" is therefore not the case for me and how I would like to view my fellow human beings.
I don't think I consider it narcissistic - there are numerous other alternatives of consideration, right? Which ones help to develop my view is a matter of decision. For example, I can also come to a neutral position because I simply acknowledge the fact. For me it is rather reassuring to know that everyone has a subjective attitude towards the things they decide and experience. It keeps me from fruitless heated discussions.
What are you talking about!!!
I believe I understand what you are saying and if I do then you don't understand what I'm saying.
Is everybody not only the protagonist in his story but only ever the subject, never the object of its action? What pride, conceit and arrogance! It only befits a god. That's why it's a narcissistic worldview: as the subject, everything is your creation, your reflection - an extension of you.
When that's the case, you can consider me what you will but this won't change that I'm still - for all you care - your idea, nothing unknown to you, out of your power. This is of course bull; albeit some people are veritable dullards but if you probe them you'll find they still have a soul which you can't demystify without consciously lying to yourself.
Do I need you to intend to insult me to be insulted? No, it's me whose insulted. I'm not just an object of your subjective experience, who has to be objectified in order for my experience to be legitimate and real.
In all honesty, I am not offended. I say this tongue and cheek, b/c it is an offensive thing to say to other human beings; an insulting way to view the world; and a seed for evil deeds. I speak, as I wish we all did, to make a more perfect world.
The deeper meaning of my comment and questions to you were if we are not already in a unbalance between quantifying and qualifying.
This expresses itself already in the very fact that economics rule western societies and numbers like GDP, the amount of citizens, their age, their income, their rate of unemployments, you name it. Where is the qualitative aspect in that? Are there efforts to a similar extent to find out peoples well being?
To come to a deeper understanding questions could be asked as the one I was asking in my first comment to you. Which was: "Can we agree upon the fact that all objects are nouns?" To find a name for an object we must have a consensus, don't we?
Our world is full of objects (therefore names created formerly by consent to enter the dictionary and be accepted as such). Still, words are tricky and the one subject uses them differently as the other subject understands them. Within the context of a more complex communication, again a new consent must be found. As there is always a certain amount of uncertainty in which every individual understands the meaning of an expression, or term, the participants in a connection are left to one thing: to trust the other one that even though there is miscommunication, nevertheless the intention is not bad but a desire to understand each other.
My concept of "narcissism" can differ from your concept of this term. Overall I rate it as not desirable to be narcissistic.
Ok, you're talking about the vocabulary, not the grammar. Of course if we can't point to the same thing, then we live in discrete worlds and there is no possibility of communication. But that is not such a problem for us, is it? So, why belabor the argument? Get to specifics and let's see whether we can point to the same thing. In most instances I expect we can.
From the overall content of vieiras article I understood the following: That the attempt to quantify the world in order to understand each other and to come to consensus through objectivity shows an imbalance where "quality" is the loser.
The reason why this seems to be the case, I bring in the thought that people often refer to the objectivity of measuring but still are trapped in their subjective view on objects.
Objectivity and facts are abused to form a subjective opinion or argument. Between people I often observe that one accuses the other one of being subjective while he or she himself is subjective, too. But actually, this hinders communication and makes understanding worse than better. To withdraw oneself to the position of objectivity is often not more than the "I know it better than you" attitude. To find a true understanding in an empathetic way I made the experience that it is helpful to accept that the other has his view for reasons only he knows himself. Even, if his point sounds illogical to me it's not from his point of view. There is a wide scale of this subjectivity. From the point I must preserve it - because otherwise I would lose myself - to the point where it gets narcissistic. With this I mean the broad spectrum between helpful and harmful.
Misunderstandings I find mostly in the realm discussing ideas (abstracts). I talk about "freedom" but could also say that I decided on speaking my mind or quit my job. Justice, equality and moral are all nouns (abstract mental concepts). To make them concrete I could say that I decided against cheating on my friend or not beating a person because I got angry at him/her. I let another one have the freedom to come to his senses instead of pushing my aroused argument through. So I would ad that it is in an objective and subjective reality that the world exists. To which extent one overrules the other is a matter of the current relation I step into.
Your feeling of having been insulted can coexist with my missing intention of insulting. From accepting that we are both right from our standpoint, we can unite instead of separate.
Otherwise, we would harden our positions. Because I very well could ask you, if you are not making me an object in insisting that my worldview is pride, conceit and arrogant.
I feel like I'm a little out of my depth here, but just wanted to say I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through this post and comments.
I haven't seen anyone bring up Quantum Indeterminacy and how that alters the standard model of physics. There is a growing movement amongst physicists towards accepting that there is no set state for material objects, and instead it's about probability distribution. If the very act of measurement forces an outcome, are we not actively altering our realities with each observation we make?
There's also very much an acknowledgement from the scientific establishment that science, or specifically physics lacks a universal model, which is why you have groundbreaking individuals like Edward Witton who are proposing even more out there ideas like M-theory. Very much an attempt at unifying the sciences.
Yes interesting stuff. We definitely do alter reality by measurement. I don't see how that couldn't be. It makes you think about the connection or interface between physics and metaphysics, and the nature of reality.
It would be necessary to establish several points first, for example, does the fact that there is a (objective?) reality independent of the human necessarily make this reality measurable numerically? and also, does the fact that we all have a subjective perception of the world necessarily make this reality subjective, or is there, on the contrary, some way of knowing the true reality beyond perceptions?
Objectivity starts precisely from the fact that matter has inherent qualities, now, being the qualities an idea in itself, because they don't have a material existence, we find that, being unquantifiable ideas, part of these objects are in themselves unquantifiable. Making the material plane not measurable exactly.
In the same way in the example of the publication, if all humans possessed a single thought, it would be relatively easy to plan the economy, since most of what makes human beings unquantifiable (their ideas), would have disappeared, making room for universal ideas.
Furthermore, if objectivity starts from the fact that objects necessarily have inherent qualities, and these qualities are ideal, the proper research method to discover these qualities would be the qualitative one, and not the quantitative one.
Why do I affirm that objective qualities are ideal and not material? Because what makes a chair be a chair, for example, is not that its material composition, is its purpose, and as such, its ideal objective. A chair can only be a chair because man has the idea that he should sit there. And because it was created for man to sit there.
To say that a chair is made to sit is quite objective, but it is only because the human ideally so has conceived it.
I don't start from the basis that reality is ideal, and neither material, I start precisely that both together form reality, which although conceptualized as two, for educational purposes, are not really two separate or independent entities.
I think when talking of objectivity and subjectivity beginning with etymological definitions has to be the way to go since we're all over the place with our definitions.
Totally so. What a good view you gave on this! Thank you for providing it so so accentuated and to the point.
I often breed about this problematics and sometimes am deeply annoyed by this scientistic epidemic.
We count and measure and weigh because we can. It seems to be a certain fun and fascination to deal with quantities. In most cases we confuse quantity with quality and give reasons for actions and decisions based on measurements and statistics that contain but are not statements about quality.
Have you ever read Robert Pirsing's book about "The art of motorcycle maintenance"? There, the protagonist becomes almost mad in defining "quality".
The more we find out about man himself and about the environment, biological, chemical, physical influences, etc., as well as psychosocial aspects of human existence, the more and more detailed our efforts to measure everything. The units to be measured are further and further split and again split.
Now we have so many divided sciences and opinions and worldviews attached to them that it is difficult to unite them for a more holistic view. I find problematic in this context, if one tries to describe mental processes mathematically.
Alternative thinkers no longer talk about measurement, but about mapping.
If you like, read this article of mine:
https://steemit.com/steemstem/@erh.germany/what-is-reality-a-systemic-view-of-life-part-one
Magnificent publication attached, it is not surprising that it agrees with almost or everything exposed.
Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to read the work of Pirsig, thanks for the recommendation.
This is something that is very likely to be used in the future to describe modernity, since the division of labor and specialization are certainly two essential characteristics in the whole way we have structured the world. As always, it is good until you don't abuse its use and you want to conceptualize everything as an independent entity, thus losing the natural and inherent connection that all processes have.
Thanks for the comment. Greetings!
Mathematics is an abstraction. It's like statistics and meta-data. Mathematics has immense utility but ultimately no physical reality. Quantification is like explaining colors in words. You could attempt but it'd always be 100% false. But abstractions regarding colors/light such as wave length etc. is greatly useful and civilization wouldn't exist without those abstractions. But meta-data isn't data and Mary would gain new knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument#Thought_experiment)
Enlightning morning lecture. Concerning Marxist's world view, there was more than merely maths. Unfortunately all their counting and reducing to the numbers spoilt the whole idea of creating an alternative to the capitalist reality which showed its ugly face in the life of the proletarians and poor farmers in England and the tzarist Russia in the 19th century.
Interesting to see what benefits all the block chains and cryptos will bring to the common people.