Quantitative or Qualitative?

bell curveRabbi Elazar said, “Whoever counts the people of Israel transgresses a negative commandment, for it is stated by the prophet Hoshea (2:1), ‘the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea which cannot be measured.’” (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 22b)

Just as the sand under your summer shoes represents shells from uncountable animal species and chips from innumerable rock types, so we are a sea of unique individuals. We cannot be stereotyped. We cannot be quantified.

What a great Talmudic argument against quantitative research in the social sciences! Life is complex and highly nuanced. No two situations are identical. Quantitative researchers miss this. They focus on only a few features of their subject. And their conclusions only describe tendencies across populations. Thus, only qualitative research can reflect life’s subtleties.

So I believed, so I argued, so I insisted – such a pure phenomenologist I was! Only reports on experiences, embedded in life’s gritty context, I thought, could give insight.

Gradually, I have changed my mind.

Some years ago, I attended a peace studies conference. At the conference, our group split into two ideological camps: pacifists and just war theorists. The just war theorists wanted to know when war could be justified. “What if a tactic could possibly prevent 400 civilian deaths, but possibly lose 20 soldiers?” they asked. “Would you employ it?” “What if it would surely save one innocent, but sacrifice 20 soldiers. Would you employ it then?” The pacifists refused to answer. “These are ridiculous questions,” they said. “Let’s work on transforming hearts and minds through education, so that we don’t have to quantify the value of human lives.” Of course, I believed, argued, and insisted along with the pacifists.

During one conference meal, I sat next to a famous American sociologist. He spent most of the meal complaining about consulting at a high-level economic policy meeting. He said, “I told them that if they chose this direction, there would be 2 million jobs lost; 500,000 divorces; and 200,000 suicides. They know, but they don’t care.”

And I realized: When we face harsh dilemmas, numbers help us understand what is at stake.

Some statisticians idealize numbers. The normal curve, they say, represents an essential structure of the universe. Survey any population, measure any characteristic. Juggle the results statistically, and the variation can be mapped on a bell-shaped graph. Other statisticians are more practical. The statistical model, they say, organizes information into a curve. It does not necessarily reflect the quantitative structure of reality.

Rabbi Elazar sides with the practical thinkers. He might say that numbers are a matter of convenience. Clever human beings invented them to keep track of things. God forbid anyone should imagine they capture the human soul, or offer a fixed picture of any divine spark!

Much of our Kabbalistic tradition, however, disagrees with Rabbi Elazar. In Kabbalistic thought, numbers do express essential structures. Numbers reveal patterns that reach across multiple worlds of consciousness and reality. A number that appears in two worlds showcases an archetypal pattern.

The Zohar sees an archetypal pattern in the opening chapters of the book of Numbers-Bamidbar. There (2:1-34), Moses and Aaron organize the tribes into four groups, forming a rectangle of camps around the sanctuary. Each camp flies a banner with an ancestral symbol.

Why organize the camp into a rectangle, a four-sided figure? Why not a 12-sided dodecagon, with a section for each of the twelve tribes? Or a circle with no sides, expressing national unity? Because, says the Zohar, numbers link worlds. In this passage, the number four links worlds.

In the Israelite camp, the number four shapes the traffic flow of daily life. And the flow of daily life points to the flow of Divine life. When the prophet Ezekiel glimpses heaven, he sees angels with four faces: lion, ox, eagle, and human (1:5-25). Each face expresses a different earth-energy. Each earth-energy hints at a particular spiritual quality. Each ancestral symbol flown represents that Divine quality.

Rav Kook tries to reconcile Rabbi Elazar’s view with the Zohar’s view. In Ezekiel’s vision, angels move at God’s will – and only God’s will. Each angel expresses only the single energy assigned to it. Human beings, however, are complex, and act from free will. We are inspired by, but not limited by, the world’s quantitative structure.

At the peace studies conference, lost in my qualitative philosophy, I almost missed this message. But now I understand: statistics identify problems, opportunities and questions. As per Rav Kook and my sociologist friend, the most important question is: How will you respond?

Image: wikimedia commons, by Ephert

0 Comments
  1. I came at it from the other direction. I started off as a quantitative researcher firmly convinced that qualitative methods held no merit. Then I took a grad course in qualitative methods and engaged in the process. I was very excited by what I learned.

    Most importantly I learned once more that different questions require different methods of inquiry. We learn this over and over and over again from our texts, from our sages, from our mentors and from our own lives.

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