“Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.”

—  Hilaire Belloc

"On Statistics"
The Silence of the Sea (1940)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and deat…" by Hilaire Belloc?
Hilaire Belloc photo
Hilaire Belloc91
writer 1870–1953

Related quotes

“Three centuries of increasingly intense application of the quantitative method had exhausted its guarantee of the progressive improvement of thought, because the regions where the method is adequate have already been explored. […] It is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that a new method is now necessary to supplement the method of quantitative analysis.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 180

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis photo

“Mechanics… was an axiomatic construction; and… its problem could be solved quantitatively by algebraic methods.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Robert Jacobus Forbes and E. J. Dijksterhuis (1963) A History of Science and Technology, vol. I: Ancient Times to the Seventeenth Century, Baltimore.

Ian Hacking photo

“Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Source: The Emergence Of Probability, 1975, Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 102.

“The extension of Black's method by the physicist Lavoisier led to the downfall of the purely qualitative theory of phlogiston, and gave to chemistry the true methods of investigation, and its first great quantitative law—the law of conservation of matter.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

J. R. Partington, Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)

Tjalling Koopmans photo

“Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Paul Samuelson, Tjalling Koopmans, and Richard Stone. "Report of the evaluative committee for Econometrica." Econometrica- journal of the Econometric Society. (1954): 141-146.

“Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Paul Samuelson, Tjalling Koopmans, and Richard Stone. "Report of the evaluative committee for Econometrica." Econometrica- journal of the Econometric Society. (1954): 141-146.

Paul A. Samuelson photo

“Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Paul Samuelson, Tjalling Koopmans, and Richard Stone. "Report of the evaluative committee for Econometrica." Econometrica- journal of the Econometric Society. (1954): 141-146.
1950s–1970s

Ragnar Frisch photo

“Two important features in the modern development of economics are the application of mathematics to abstract economic reasoning… and the attempt at placing economics on a numerical and experimental basis by an intensive study of economic statistics.
Both these developments have a common characteristic: they emphasize the quantitative character of economics. This quantitative movement in our estimation is one of the most promising developments in modern economics. We also consider it important that the two aspects of the quantitative method referred to should be furthered, developed, and studied jointly as two integrating parts of economics.
We therefore venture to propose the establishment of an international periodical devoted to the advancement of the quantitative study of economic phenomena, and especially to the development of a closer relation between pure economics and economic statistics.
We believe that the scope of the new journal would be happily suggested if it is called "Oekonometrika."”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Accordingly, the quantitative study of economic phenomena here considered may be termed econometrics. <br class="br">Frisch (1927) as quoted in Divisia 1953, pp.24-25; Cited in: Bjerkholt, Olav. &quot; Ragnar Frisch and the foundation of the Econometric Society and Econometrica http://www.ssb.no/a/histstat/doc/doc_199509.pdf.&quot; ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY MONOGRAPHS 31 (1998): 26-57. <br class="br">Lead paragraph of a memorandum on the importance of establishing the journal &quot;Oekonometrika&quot; <br class="br">1920

“Those who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profess belief in something because its opposite cannot be proved … In the realm where “prejudice” is now most an issue, it normally takes a form like this: you cannot prove—by the method of statistics and quantitative measurement—that men are not equal. Therefore all men are equal. … You cannot prove—again by the methods of science—that one culture is higher than another. Therefore the culture of the Digger Indians is just a good as that of Muncie, Indiana, or thirteenth-century France.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 6.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

David C. McClelland photo

“It is important, therefore, to understand at the outset the simplicity of this book - what it can accomplish and what it cannot. What it does try to do is to isolate certain psychological factors and to demonstrate rigorously by quantitative scientific methods that these factors are generally important in economic development.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. ix

Related topics