Quantitative

The quantitative world is a beautiful thing, specifically because it is simple, predictable, measurable, and without emotional entanglements. A pound of feathers and a pound of butter really are the same thing. In a quantitative world you should be able to show up for work for 40 hours and receive 40 dollars pay every week without end.

Having grown up in a quantitative world and studied math and statistics at an early age, it is difficult to imagine a world in which objective measurement, inquisitiveness (vs. inquisition), and doubt are not natural and allowed. How could Galileo be persecuted for stating what anyone could observe? How can what is happening in the world not be true because it has not been part of the past?

I suspect that post-positivist thinking moved the western and eastern worlds into the modern age. As we allowed people to ask questions and change the current structure of society and knowledge, we discover valuable laws, materials, and applications that transform society. Who would suspect that sand could become silicon? Without the transformation all human have to work with are sand, beaches, dirt mounts. With the transformation, sand becomes silicon, computer, and knowledge transfer. The whole world changes because are willing to change the use of sand.

We own progress to new uses of oil, wood, metal, atoms, chemicals, bacteria, etc. Inquiry, questioning, measuring, experimenting. All of these lead to a new understanding of the world. All of these lead to a new experience of the world. This leads to a new human place in the world.

I think we are very lucky to be able to think qualitatively. For some reason we seem to be the only species on earth that can think like this. We do not have competition for thinking, creating, changing. Humans in Boston, Bombay, Sydney, Moscow, London, and Tokyo all compete with each other in understanding and changing the world. But all of them are working to change it in a way that benefits most humans. Imagine if we were competing with dolphins in this thinking race. They would certainly have an entirely different take on what is important in the world. Imagine dolphin sewage being thrust up onto the shores of California. Imagine the Florida Keys being leveled to an altitude of 30 feet below sea level to make room for coral farming in the area. That kind of competition would be very different from what exists purely between humans today. What if the dolphins began mining for metals from the ocean inward beneath New York City? We may find them pulling out human plumbing, subway metals, and skyscraper infrastructure to build their own structures in the sea.

We are lucky to have quantitative thinking … and very lucky that other species do not have it as well.