The Atlas of Quantification
Overview
This presentation serves as a comprehensive “atlas” mapping the historical, social, and cognitive expansion of quantification across various domains of modern life. By examining the transition from qualitative judgments to numerical metrics, it illustrates how statistical tools and data gradually became the ultimate standard of objectivity and rationality.
Project Description
The Atlas of Quantification traces the historical development of quantitative thinking from its early roots to its current dominance in decision-making processes. Through careful analysis of key historical moments and conceptual shifts, this work reveals how numbers, statistics, and data transformed from useful tools into the primary language of modern rationality.
The project explores:
- The historical trajectory of quantification across different domains
- The social and cognitive mechanisms that enabled the spread of numerical thinking
- The transformation of statistics from a descriptive tool to a normative standard
- How data-driven rationality became naturalized in modern institutions and thinking
Ultimately, the talk traces these developments to reveal how our contemporary reliance on data-driven decision-making and computational rationality was historically constructed rather than inevitable.
This work connects to my broader research on the cognitive history of statistics and the emergence of modern standards of rationality in Poland (1831-1939).