Limits of the Numerical - by Christopher Newfield

About the Book

"This timely collection by a diverse group of humanists challenges undue reverence or skepticism toward quantification and shows how it can be a force for good in our social lives despite its many abuses. The book focuses on quantification in climate, higher education, and health: the role of numerical estimates and targets in explaining and planning for climate change; the quantification of outcomes in teaching and research; and numbers representing health, the effectiveness of medical interventions, and well-being more broadly. One might assume that quantification would be a force for good in climate science, a force for bad in higher education, and a mixed bag in healthcare contexts. The authors complicate those narratives, uncovering, for example, epistemic problems with some core numbers in climate science. But their theme is less the problems revealed by case studies than the methodological issues common to them all. Only by stepping outside quantitative frameworks, they argue, can one appreciate what those frameworks do, how they do it, and whether they do it badly or well"--

Book Synopsis

This collection examines the uses of quantification in climate science, higher education, and health.

Numbers are both controlling and fragile. They drive public policy, figuring into everything from college rankings to vaccine efficacy rates. At the same time, they are frequent objects of obfuscation, manipulation, or outright denial. This timely collection by a diverse group of humanists and social scientists challenges undue reverence or skepticism toward quantification and offers new ideas about how to harmonize quantitative with qualitative forms of knowledge.

Limits of the Numerical focuses on quantification in several contexts: climate change; university teaching and research; and health, medicine, and well-being more broadly. This volume shows the many ways that qualitative and quantitative approaches can productively interact-how the limits of the numerical can be overcome through equitable partnerships with historical, institutional, and philosophical analysis. The authors show that we can use numbers to hold the powerful to account, but only when those numbers are themselves democratically accountable.

Review Quotes

"Limits of the Numerical shows with compelling detail, theoretical vision, and political urgency just how and why numbers matter. As J. L. Austin and Judith Butler showed us how we do things with words, the authors of Limits of the Numerical show us how we do things with numbers."-- "Chad Wellmon, University of Virginia"

"In the confusing context of both the pandemic and global warming, this compelling book is a timely unraveling of the uses and abuses of statistical models, quantified measures, big data, and numerical targets. Limits of the Numerical paves the way for renewed scientific controversies and public debates on the work of quantification and its politics."-- "Isabelle Bruno, University of Lille and Academic Institute of France (IUF)"

"The availability and power of numbers in our 'data-driven world' have never been greater, and, for just that reason, are greatly contested. Limits of the Numerical explores the paradoxes of quantitative reasoning that have arisen as a corollary of its power and recognizes that a blind reverence for numbers undermines expertise as much as it supports it. These stories of numbers are inescapably human ones."-- "Theodore M. Porter, University of California, Los Angeles"

About the Author

Christopher Newfield is director of research at the Independent Social Research Foundation, London. Anna Alexandrova is professor of philosophy of science in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a fellow of King's College. Stephen John is the Hatton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Public Health in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, where he is also a fellow of Pembroke College.