Re: [Leica] Quantities and qualities (long, but interesting! ;)

["Steve LeHuray" <icommag@toad.net>]

OH!! Now I get it.......
Steve
Annapolis

- ----------
>From: Martin Howard <mvhoward@mac.com>
>To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
>Subject: [Leica] Quantities and qualities (long, but interesting! ;)
>Date: Sun, Jan 23, 2000, 7:12 PM
>

>Steve LeHuray wrote, in part:
>>
>> And to the best of my knowledge
>> every scientific endeavor from Anthropology to cancer to film emulsion to
>> snow shovels to yacht design has some baseline numbers attached to it.
>>
>
>Hehe.  Reseach is often divided into two categories: qualitative and
>quantitative.  Fields of research such as anthropology and ethnography are
>employed in qualitative research, where the focus in on understanding issues
>such as qualitative differences, significance, and meaning.  I'm not an
>anthropologist, but I've been exposed to ethnography as part of designing
>interactive systems: These are used by people, and people and their actions
>are not easily reduced to numbers.
>
>You'd be hard pressed to find any respectible anthropological/ethnographical
>study reduced to some baseline numbers ;)
>
>
>Off-topic, and as an interesting sideline, the Western world's (or perhaps
>modern civilization's even) preoccupation with quantifiable measures is an
>testiment to the impact that Descarte's thinking has had.  A common reaction
>today is that if it cannot be expressed in numbers, then it either doesn't
>exist, or is some mushy New Age concept.
>
>Conversly, proponents of mushy New Age concepts will often casts their ideas
>in numbers, so as to lend an air of respectability to it.  Take
>lens/car/yacht/hi-fi/wine/toothpick testing, for instance.  Quite often, the
>test will consist of some opinionated indivudual who plays around with the
>lens/car/yacht/hi-fi/wine/toothpick for half a week, assigns half a dozen
>numbers to various attributes of the item under scrutiny, concludes by
>adding or averaging the numbers, and then publicly proclaims that "This is a
>9.6 toothpick".
>
>They are actually doing themselves a disservice: Because they think that
>numbers means objectivity and objectivity means science, and science means
>respectibility, they shortcut this to think that numbers mean
>respectibility.  However, philosphically, it can be argued that NOTHING is
>objective (which makes for some really interesting discussions, preferably
>with red wine involved, but I won't go into the details here), but even by
>the commonly accepted (in Western philosophy) standards of
>objectivity/subjectivity these tests cannot be considered objective.
>Assigning numbers to them only clouds the real issues at hand and make it
>harder for people to appreciate the value of the tests, since we end up
>arguing about the numbers, rather than reading the tests and thinking about
>how the tester's tastes/opinions/situation differs QUALITATIVELY from ours
>(that which Mike J was so eloquently taking about).
>
>My point?  There is no shortcut for not thinking.  While reading equipment
>tests will, in a round about way, give us access to stuff we might otherwise
>not learn anything about, it cannot make up our minds for us.  There are too
>many variables involved, and they're not orthogonal in any case.  Even in
>the most "rigorous" tests, such as Erwin's MTF evaluations, there is still
>subjectivity in terms of agreeing upon what to test, how to read charts, how
>equipment is calibrated, what equipment is used, and ultimately (and least
>accessible) a whole, massive, shared understanding about what the world
>consists of and what is real and what is not.  Want an example?  Bokeh was
>nonsense twenty years ago (and still is to some).  It didn't exist.  We
>still cannot reduce it to a simple number, but now there is some doubt to
>the infallibility of MTF testing in capturing all important (and existing)
>characteristics of a lens.
>
>(Steve, sorry, not ranting at you, but you sparked ideas that have been
>brewing for some while... ;)
>
>M.
>
>-- 
>Martin Howard                     | "Very funny Scotty.  Now beam down
>Interactive Systems Designer      | my clothes."
>email: mvhoward@mac.com           |
>www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------
>