Description
| Product ID: | 9780226817132 |
| Product Form: | Hardback |
| Country of Manufacture: | US |
| Title: | Limits of the Numerical |
| Subtitle: | The Abuses and Uses of Quantification |
| Authors: | Author: Dr. Anna Alexandrova, Dr. Stephen John, Dr. Christopher Newfield |
| Page Count: | 304 |
| Subjects: | Society and culture: general, Society & culture: general, Philosophy of mathematics, Philosophy of mathematics |
| Description: | 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. |
| Imprint Name: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publisher Name: | The University of Chicago Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2022-07-13 |
