by David Boyle
Utilitarian Society 30
Utilitarians 17–18, 20–1, 28–31, 33, 34, 65, 66, 10, 82, 112
Valery, Paul 14
Vanderbilt, Cornelius 141
Vasconcellos, John 93–100, 103, 104, 107, 187, 224
Victorians 65, 80–2, 108–10
Von Ostein, Wilhelm 1–3
Vonnegut, Kurt 221
Wakeham, John 205
Walker, Perry 189, 224
Waring, Marilyn 178–9
wealth 176–7
national 169–73, 177
Webb, Beatrice 113, 115, 117, 118–19, 123–6, 161
Webb, Sidney 119, 124–5, 161
Welch, Jack 151
welfare 68, 97, 125
Wellington, Duke of 26, 34
Whose Reality Counts? (Chambers) 40
Whyte, David 103
Wilberforce, William 24
Wilson, Harold 56, 170
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 160
women 179
Woolard, Ed 219
Woolf, Virginia 157, 159, 166
workhouses 68, 71–2, 124, 220
World Bank 171, 190
written numbers 7, 10–11
Young, Arthur 27
Young, G.M. 65, 66, 81
Young, Michael 144
Zadek, Simon 142, 143–7, 150, 224
zero 9–11
Acknowledgements
‘Why are boys obsessed with numbers?’ girl asks boy in Bill Forsyth’s film Gregory’s Girl, lying on their backs on the grass and gazing at the night sky. She was right to ask. Boys like numbers: there was a time in my life when I could list the statistics of British battleships until far, far beyond the tolerance threshold of Admiral Beatty himself.
So this book is partly an act of contrition to anyone unfortunate enough to hear me do so, but also an attempt to redress the balance a bit. Because, just as many of us imagine we are building a more feminine and caring world, the new place also seems to be underpinned by hard, unemotional and ultimately distorting statistics. I believe there’s a contradiction here somewhere. I want to live where people can see beyond the figures to embrace complex truth.
This is intended as a polemic. I’m not against the idea of measuring, nor have I tried to write an academic critique of quantitative versus qualitative research – there’s enough of them out there already, and I’m not qualified to write one. Nor is it intended as a critique of scientific method: I concentrate on the dilemma at its sharpest – with the business people, economists and politicians who are busy shaping our world. In short, this isn’t a book about statistics, but a book about a pervasive blindness that I believe is creeping insidiously into the way we understand things.
I am enormously indebted to countless conversations about aspects of this labyrinthine subject with a range of friends and relatives on both sides of the Atlantic. I can’t list them all, but they will recognize the discussions we had from these pages – and I hope it’s a happy memory. I’ve certainly enjoyed it. I’d also like to acknowledge a debt to Theodore Porter’s fascinating book Trust in Numbers, Robert Chambers’ Whose Reality Counts? and The Dent Dictionary of Measurement (Mike Darton and John Clark), where most of the bizarre units of measurement came from.
There are a number of others I’m ever so grateful to for specific nuggets of wisdom, help and advice, including Alan Atkisson, Clifford Cobb, Carol Cornish, Kate Cutler, Lesley Harding, Sue Holliday, Amanda Horton-Mastin, Sanjiv Lingayah, Serena and Tony Ludford, Alex MacGillivray, Mark Mackintosh, Rachel Maybank, Sara Murphy, Gill Paul, Alison Pilling, Peter Raynard, Melita Rogelj, Jonathan Rowe, Catherine Rubbens, Andrew Simms, Marian Storkey, Karen Sullivan, Mathis Wackernagel, Perry Walker, Gavin Yamey, Simon Zadek and everyone at the New Economics Foundation – for their patience, friendship and shared excitement over the years. And especially thank you to Edgar Cahn and Sarah Burns, whose inspiration will be obvious. And Ed Mayo, who read many of the chapters in draft, and made a series of incisive and sparkling suggestions which made the book much better than it otherwise would have been – and introduced me to e e cummings.
I am enormously grateful to my agent Julian Alexander, my editor Lucinda McNeile, to Lucinda Cooke at Lucas Alexander Whitley, and to Tamsin Miller and Cecilia McCullough at HarperCollins – and all the others responsible for making sure the book actually appears. Their brilliant advice and constant support has been one of the most luxurious aspects of writing it – writing anything, in fact.
The mistakes are of course all mine, but I couldn’t have done it without them all. Their contribution is another excellent example of the unmeasurable.
While you and I have lips and voices which are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch invents an instrument to measure Spring with?
e e cummings
About the Author
David Boyle is a journalist who has written about new ideas in economics for the past decade in newspapers and magazines all over the world. He is the author of Funny Money. Since 1988 he has been the editor of New Economics magazine and he has also edited a range of other publications including Town & Country Planning. David Boyle is a fellow of the RSA and a well-known figure in organizations such as the New Economics Foundation. He has been a Winston Churchill Fellow and is a regular broadcaster on the future of money, the economics of cities and a range of other topics.
Also by the Author
Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash
Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes?
Copyright
William Collins
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000
Copyright © David Boyle 2000, 2001
David Boyle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006531999
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007372898
Version: 2014–01–02
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