It’s very clear that the word is divided by two different ways of thinking. One side is more analytic, based in facts, while the other is abstract, based on feelings or agreements of comum sense. When it comes to quantity and quality, some would agree that quantity is related to the left hemisphere of the brain, the analytical side, and quality is related to the right hemisphere, the romantic side. However, in the modern world sometimes we will find quality being measured, which takes that to be the left, or also called classic way of thinking. For instance, some clothes brands are more expensive than others because of their quality, and society accepts to pay a higher price for those clothes. Furthermore, we can analyze what exactly the quality of those clothes mean, is it durability? Is it easy to wash? Is it a modern cut? Is it a company that values employees? Or is it just the value of that brand? Let’s get the first question and analyse it further. Durability: if we are measuring the quality of the clothes by how durable they are, its qualitative essence is based on a quantitative measurement of how long the clothes will last. On the other hand if we analyze the quality of the clothes based on the value of the brand, it’s different because there is not a quantitative right answer to that, but there is a comum agreement in society that that brand is reliable and ‘cool’. However, there are many reasons why a brand can be known as a quality brand. One of the reasons could be the investment in marketing (which is quantitative because we can count the money they invest in marketing), or customer service, or how much they pay their employees (that also becomes quantitative), and other qualitative reasons, for instance what the brand stands for or its ‘vibe’. That raises the question, what is actually quality and isn’t that also quantitative if we think of quality as the value of that ‘thing’?
Quality can mean different things for different people. For instance, I see quality in my work space when it offers me interaction with people, flexibility and a fun environment. My husband sees quality more as higher pay, vacation time and the ability to work by himself. One of his ways to see the quality of the position, as mentioned, is higher pay, which is actually quantitative. Furthermore, the quantity in this case can be measured as hours x pay (easy quantitative measure), or value x pay (here becoming again a qualitative because what is actually the value? Who is measuring it?). Maybe here we can agree that the value of a person that works in Real Estate for 18 years will be higher than someone that just got their license, therefore they will have a higher pay. But again, measuring the value of something is hard and many times abstract, letting the decision to the sense of what we know to be ‘right’ and/or realistic.
When the scientific revolution brought the quantitative approach to know ‘what is real and right’ in the enlightenment era, there was a division between quantity and quality. A lot of ‘qualitative’ philosophers ended up being resistant to quantitative methods, but the truth is that they will always walk together. According to Bunge “Quantity and quality are mutually complementary rather than exclusive. Indeed, every quantity is either the numerosity of a collection of items that share the same quality or the intensity of a quality. Hence, in the process of concept information, quality proceeds quantity. Therefore there can be no opposition between them.” With that said, it sounds like we need to first decide on a quality and then we can quantify that, for instance if we are talking about bananas and apples, it’s easy to define its qualities and then count how many of each you have, quantifying the objects. However, it is not always simple to qualify the object, mostly when we are talking about an abstract value (the knowledge of a person or sentimental value). Therefore, quantity arises out of every characteristic of quality, that can be defined in different forms, being one of them the quantitative quality itself.
My conclusion is that quality and quantity will always walk together and they can also have different meanings or importances depending on each situation. I agree that quality comes before quantity when we are talking about counting a specific thing, but for that we must decide what quality means, and sometimes that can be difficult, since quality can have different meanings for different people or situations.
Work Cited
Bunge, Mario. The Sociology-Philosophy Connection. Routledge, 2017.