The Common Problem . . .
is that people see qualitative vs. quantitative reasoning as a permanent choice. The reality is that both are necessary tools to be an effective thinker. Yes, there is a need for quantitative analysis. Balancing a checkbook, analyzing business opportunities, ranking athletes and sports teams, these all require using numbers to find the answer. For optimizing, for organizing, for defining the details of a problem. What the purity of numbers giveth, it also taketh away. Numbers lack context. The classic math homework of reading problems is all about the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Before you do the math, you must decide what numbers are important. You finish the problem by using quantitative analysis to address the details.
Many people will argue that everything must be measured, numbered, and counted because of computers. Computers work in numbers, after all. Yet the Holy Grail of computer science for the last 20 years has been to equal the human mind in qualitative analysis. Boolean logic, the foundation of computer science, organizes relationships between values according to 5 criteria: and; or; not; not and; not or. These relationships are defined by whether or not they are true; by how large a margin is immaterial. Most software code is organized into statements of Boolean logic; computer hardware, from the fastest video card to the $5 thumb drive in your pocket, is built from logic gates that operate according to Boolean relationships. What Western society has skipped for the last century or more is the qualitative analysis to start the problem. Select the desired outcome, then define how to reach it.
The Uncommon Solution . . .
Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are tools. People need to know which one is appropriate to the answer they are trying to find. The problem comes when one or the other becomes someone’s worldview. Qualitative analysis is rooted in Platonic philosophy, the study of the ideal and abstract; quantitative analysis arises from Aristotelian reasoning, reaching a specific conclusion on the basis of the empirical and concrete. Concrete observational is an intermediate stage in cognitive development. Continued progress requires moving beyond that stage. After 2000 years of practice, Western society should have some margin of superiority over the ancients in terms of how to use information.
Copyright 2016 by J.D. Lewis
The Common Problem 