The Challenge of Quantification: An Interdisciplinary Reading

Abstract

The present work looks at what we call “the multiverse of quantification”, where visible and invisible numbers permeate all aspects and venues of life. We review the contributions of different authors who focus on the roles of quantification in society, with the aim of capturing different and sometimes separate voices. Several scholars, including economists, jurists, philosophers, sociologists, communication and data scientists, express concerns or identify critical areas of our relationship with new technologies of ‘numericization’. While mindful of the important specificities of the different families of quantification, we use our broad and holistic canvas to explore possible spaces for a more systematic investigation of incumbent and novel quantifications, as to increase communication among disciplinary communities, and among these and society, in the pursuit a democratic agency and self-defence.

What can mathematical modelling contribute to a sociology of quantification?

“…The study of quantification is burgeoning with work coming from different fields of scholarship (Di Fiore et al, 2022 ; Popp Berman and Hirschman, 2018 ). Two important French schools of sociology of numbers—the so-called Foucauldian studies of quantification and the school of Economics of Convention (Desrosières, 1998 ; Mennicken and Salais, 2022 )—have led to the present movements of “statactivists” under the slogan “another number is possible” (Bruno et al, 2014a ).…”