Law blog rankings, law school rankings, citation rankings, basketball rankings, what have you: if it exists, it’s probably located within some ranking index somewhere. OK, I’m not saying such things are useless (especially if it involves baseball), but I do think we invest far too much time and attention to this rankings mania, in other words, we routinely accord such stuff disproportionate significance and undue deference. Bewitchment by ranking indices of one kind or another is, I think, symptomatic of what the sociologist and economist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) defined as “cultural adolescence” (more on that in a moment), or what the philosopher Nicholas Rescher calls our (positivist and post-positivist) “penchant for quantities” and a “fetish for measurement:”
“People incline to think that if something significant is to be said, then you can say it with numbers and thereby transmute it into a meaningful measurement. They endorse Lord Kelvin’s dictum that ‘When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.’ But when one looks at the issue more clearly and critically, one finds there is no convincing reason to think this is so on any universal and pervasive basis.”[1]
Another philosopher, Hilary Putnam, reminds us that the rise of Pragmatism in this country was in part a revolt against Formalism of one kind or another, and this revolt consists not in “a denial of the utility of formal models in certain contexts; but it manifests itself in a sustained critique of the idea that formal models, in particular, systems of symbolic logic, rule books of inductive logic, formalizations of scientific theories, etc.—describe a condition to which rational thought can or should aspire.”[2] The fascination with rankings is of a piece with our periodic relapses into the false psycho-intellectual security of Formalism. And thus Putnam rightly reminds us that our conceptions of rationality cast a far wider net than all that can be scientized, logicized, mathematized, in short, formalized, for “the horror of what cannot be methodized is nothing but method fetishism.”[3] In other words, reason is not circumscribed by mathematics or formal logic, but rather by philosophy in the most generous sense, by poetry, by narrative, and rhetoric is its handmaid.
Economics, with good reason one of the more intellectually insecure of the social scientific disciplines, has for some time now indulged in a rhetorical bad habit: mathematical formalism, and a particular brand of such formalism, namely, emulation of the kind of methods thought to hold pride of place in physics (understood to exemplify the core virtues of scientific knowledge and all the suasive power of a ‘hard’ science). “[E]conomists admire physicists,” writes Deirdre McCloskey, “and judge themselves, as do most people in our culture, to be intellectually inferior to them:”
“Physicists have the most prestige among intellectual workers, and are able therefore to persuade the government to give them expensive toys. The first-rate economists imagine themselves to be good third-rate physicists. [….] Most economists, then, would accept physics as a standard for the use of mathematics. The empirical result of applying it is this: physics is less mathematical than modern economics. The proposition sounds crazy. The average economist knows a lot less mathematics than the average physicist, as is apparent from the courses both take in college. [….] The proposition, however, does not say that economics uses more math; it says that economics is ‘more mathematical.’ In the economics department the spirit of the math department reigns. [….] Economists think that science involves axiomatic proofs of theorems and then econometric tests of the QED (quod erat demonstrandum, not quantum electrodynamics). As Paul Feyerabend remarks, ‘It is to be admitted that some sciences going through a period of stagnation now present their results in axiomatic form, or try to reduce them to correlation hypotheses….’ [….] The economists, to put it another way, have adopted the intellectual values of the math department—not the values of the department of physics or electrical engineering or biochemistry they admire from afar. [….] The problem, to put it formally, is that economists have fallen in love with existence theorems, the beloved also of the math departments. [….] The most famous of these theorems is of course the Arrow-Debreu proof of the existence of competitive equilibrium…[although] [t]he problem of formalism in economics extends beyond the admitted vacuities of general equilibrium theory. [….] The way the mathematical rhetoric has been transformed into economic rhetoric has been to define the economic problem as dealing with a certain kind of (easily manipulable) mathematics and then to run the field as though math-dependent questions were in fact important for the science. It is a search under the lamppost because the light there is good, as the drunk explained after losing his keys in the dark. [….] The rhetorical problem is that economists have taken over the intellectual virtues of the wrong subject. It is not that the values of the subject are intrinsically bad. No reasonable person would object to such values flourishing within the department of mathematics. [….] The problem comes when the economists abandon the an economic question in favor of a mathematical one, and then forget to come back to the department of economics. [….] The problem lies in the sort of mathematics used, which is to say the extent of the formality, not its existence.”[4]
With Putnam, this is not a polemic against measurement, against formal models, against mathematics, but a plea to put our “trust in numbers”[5] in proper perspective. Counting, statistics, and mathematics can be, and often are, in proper proportion and with sufficient reason, virtues in the natural and social sciences, but they become the Devil’s work when we rely on them to avoid careful description, to ignore history, to transcend substantive argument. They are the very marrow of vice when used as formalist pretense, or to insinuate that the quantitative valuation of things is intrinsically and not just instrumentally good. The vices, or sins, go from venial to deadly in economics when, for instance, human beings are formalized in rational choice models and preference theories as “calculating machines pursuing Prudence and Price and Profit and Property and Power—‘P variables’ you might call them.”[6] In this case, the “P variables” crowd out all recognition and consideration of “Love and Courage, Justice and Temperance, Faith and Hope, in a word, Solidarity, the S variable of speech, stories, shame, The Sacred.” It’s not that we should, in turn, use the S variables to drown out the part played by “P variables,” for the messy truth(s) lies “in the human dance of the Sacred and Profane:” “Of course the S variables are the conditions under which the P variables work, and of course the P variables modify the effects of S variables.”[7]
The professional consequences of economists mired in vice and sin are evidenced in their palpable historical and institutional ignorance, in their reliance on the methodological equivalent of a “high-school version” of positivism and ethics, with its hard and fast distinctions between the positive and the normative, with its impermeable boundaries surrounding “facts” and “values,” at once an egregious expression of “philosophical naïvete” and “cultural barbarism.” Sombart’s notion of “cultural adolescence” was fleshed out in his portrait of the modern values in mature capitalism, and I think it helps us gain some sense of perspective on our penchant for quantities, on our fetish for measurement, on our overweening fondness for formalism. Sombart, believing America exemplified this cultural adolescence, identified it in terms of the following features:
“The child possesses four elementary ‘values;’ four ideals dominate its existence. They are (a) Physical bigness, as seen in grown-ups and imagined in giants;’ (b) Quick movement—in running, bowling a hoop, riding on a roundabout; (c) Novelty—it changes its toys very quickly, it begins something and never completes it because another occupation attracts it; and (d) Sense of power—that is why it pulls out the legs of a fly, makes Towzer stand on his hind legs and beg nicely, and flies a kite has high as it can. Curious as it may sound, these ideals, and these only will be found in all modern ‘values.’”[8]
As the late Raghavan Iyer explains,
“[Sombart] referred to the tendency to mistake bigness for greatness; the influence on the inner workings of the mind of the quantitative valuation of things [Americans everywhere and always exhibiting the ability to ‘prefix to every commodity its monetary values’]; the connection between success, competition, and sheer size; the tendency to regard the speediest achievements as the most valuable ones; the connection between megalomania, mad hurry, and record-breaking; the attraction of novelty; the habit of hyperbole; the love of sensationalism and its effect on journalism; the concern with fashions in ideas as well as clothes; and the consciousness of superiority through a sense of power that is merely an expression of weakness.”[9]
Reliance on rankings takes the place of substantive analysis and discussion of what is really important, which means going beyond the self-congratulatory attitude and sense of power that comes with being “on top,” or sublimating the enviable attitude that comes from wishing one were. It means dialectically transcending the debilitating obsession with “the quantitative valuation of things,” with severing the connection between success, competition, and sheer size. It entails a refusal to let the competitive hierarchy that rules our collective economic existence suffuse the personal and the intimate realm of daily life, a life ideally framed by the aforementioned “S variables.” In our social circles we competitively struggle to fix our identity, position, and status through emulative striving to be like those above us in the socio-economic hierarchy while studiously avoiding contact with those below us. And those on the top of the social order, anxiously
“cast their glances sideways and downward, cultivating a style that appears natural and that imbues the objects [of conspicuous consumption] that are signified within it as objects of intrinsic value. Such objects may be located at either end of the temporal spectrum: they may be identified by their antiquity or by their newness, in either case, their authenticity or their timeliness will ensure their scarcity. With new objects governed by fashion, only an elite possesses, by self-determination, the requisite aesthetic sensibility to see them properly, at least in the short term. [….] Good taste requires the abandonment of fashionable new objects once they become common currency, hence no longer marks of distinction. [….] For those below this upper crust—that is to say, for most everyone—status identity requires a panoramic view. Identity is established horizontally, but only in small part. More important are the views upward and downward. Positions in the social order are most precarious in the great middle of the middle class, where identity is poised uneasily between relationally defined extremes and where catching up to the styles previously adopted by those above instantaneously results in the debasement of those same styles—the accomplishments of high culture become middle-brow, designer labels no longer carry a cachet of exclusivity. The obsession with lifestyle that is pervasive in the United States today is attributable in part to the anxiety such social fluidity entails.”[10]
Our infatuation with rankings is but one (sometimes trivial or harmless) example of the spillover and crowding-out effects of slavish adherence to capitalism’s consumption code. Competition for status and social esteem find us preoccupied with upward emulation and downward avoidance:
“Chasing an image of what we would like to be like, we are less likely to be satisfied with what we are at any moment. We resent those whom we cannot catch and those whom we perceive as trying to catch us. Consuming is the activity of a democracy of signs; resentment is its final judgment.”[11]
Can we see beyond superficial external standards and signs of role identity and social esteem? Can we replace our fixation on the crudely competitive and rather juvenile distinction between winners and losers? Can we overcome our preoccupation with the promotion of crassly self-interested and material ends? Can we curb our appetite for consolidation of social status?
When wealth and power go hand-in-hand with cultural adolescence, we find precious little time for “thought and contemplation, for relaxation and creative work, for conversation and study, for love and friendship, for the enjoyment of the arts and the beauties of nature, for solitude and communion, for doubts and dreams.”[12]
In sum, rankings mania is a sign and symptom, both a cause and effect, of ubiquitous individual and collective anxieties in a time and place of cultural adolescence. Perhaps a bit of abstinence in this regard would do us some good. Perhaps we might find the time to contemplate what it means to be psychologically, ethically, and spiritually mature men and women in a culturally mature society.
Notes:
[1] Nicholas Rescher, Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997: 79.
[2] Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (James Conant, ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990: 63.
[3] Ibid., 140.
[4] Donald [now Deirdre] N. McCloskey, Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994: 129-143.
[5] See Theodore M. Porter’s Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
[6] Deirdre McCloskey, The Secret Sins of Economics. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, LLC, 2002: 22.
[7] Ibid., 25.
[8] Werner Sombart, “The Sociology of Capitalism,” in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeck, ed., Varieties of Classic Social Theory. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963: 184.
[9] Raghavan Iyer, Parapolitics: Toward the City of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979: 307.
[10] Nicholas Xenos, Scarcity and Modernity. London: Routledge, 1989: 99-100.
[11] Ibid., 108.
[12] Iyer, 309.
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