Universal quantifiability is a prerequisite for the domination of nature.

Evidence

Husserl emphasizes the pre-scientific, technical connotations of mathematical exactness and fungibility. These central notions of modern science emerge, not as mere byproducts of a pure science, but as pertaining to its inner conceptual structure. The scientific abstraction from concreteness, the quantification of qualities which yield exactness as well as universal validity, involve a specific concrete experience of the Lebenswelt—a specific mode of “seeing” the world. And this “seeing,” in spite of its “pure,” disinterested character, is seeing within a purposive, practical context. It is anticipating (Voraussehen) and projecting (Vorhaben). Galilean science is the science of methodical, systematic anticipation and projection. But—and this is decisive—of a specific anticipation and projection—namely, that which experiences, comprehends, and shapes the world in terms of calculable, predictable relationships among exactly identifiable units. In this project, universal quantifiability is a prerequisite for the domination of nature. Individual, non-quantifiable qualities stand in the way of an organization of men and things in accordance with the measurable power to be extracted from them. But this is a specific, socio-historical project, and the consciousness which undertakes this project is the hidden subject of Galilean science; the latter is the technic, the art of anticipation extended in infinity (ins Unendliche erweiterte Voraussicht: p. 51). — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 608

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that quantification is not epistemically neutral but is itself domination — that non-quantifiable qualities obstruct the extraction of measurable power — is the load-bearing Marcuse thesis of the chapter.
• XREF: Directly bridges to the reader’s attention/consumption critique: the drive to make everything measurable and fungible is a control project, not a neutral advance. — connects to: Reason’s apparent triumph over nature is really its obedient subjection to facts — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 45; Preserving nature within civilization always means dominating it more completely — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 145; Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 826 (+4 more)
• SEED: Article angle: ‘algorithmic quantification as the Ideenkleid of the attention economy’ — how metrics mask and serve domination.

Broader Connections

• Quantifiability is the necessary precondition for turning anything into money. #expands (0.80)
• The ideal of a universal civilization serves Western dominance interests #expands (0.70) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 176