The Triumph of Numbers – Cohen (2005)

My new job involves working with numbers. A lot. So, I started reading about using numbers, and I very much enjoyed ‘The Triumph of Numbers’ by I.B. Cohen (2005). This book gives an historical account not only of how numbers were used in different times, but also of ‘how counting shaped modern life’.

The books starts out by illustrating the power of numbers. Just by using very simple calculations, Cohen quickly arrives at the conclusion that the building of the ancient pyramids involved placing one giant block of stone in the structure, every two minutes. Since the weight of such stones is enormous, this required quite advanced techniques to achieve. Knowing the vast size of such an operation, this helps us to gain an understanding in how the Egyptians may have done it, and the level of technology available to them.

For long, people have been fascinated by numbers. Cohen’s description of the history of using numbers therefore starts with numerology. The reader is treated with lovely exercises is numerology: it is quite amazing how we can prove about anything, simply by reordering numbers that somehow correspond to letters. If only there was an empirical basis for such magic.

Off to more serious applications of numbers (by today’s standards), Cohen locates the proper start of using numbers in Hutcheson’s Moral Arithmetic. Hutcheson used formulae (and which are based on numbers) to make his claims about morality. Here, numbers were only used to illustrate a claim, but not much later people started to relate such numbers to observable phenomena. An example of this Benjamin Franklin, who used his mathematical genius to find arguments based on numbers for his political claims regarding the safety of inoculation against smallpox. He used numbers to show it was safe to have your children inoculated.
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What I Learned

Last Tuesday, I posted the preface of my Master’s Thesis on my blog. In an earlier draft, I wrote some thoughts about what I learned during my education in Sociology. In the end, I decided to delete that passage, but I saved it for publication on my blog.

So, below some thougths on what I learned about sociology:

[My] thesis completes my research master Social and Cultural Sciences, which I started upon my obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in sociology. In many ways, this thesis forms an accumulation of the lessons I learned. Three of those important lessons regard a trinity of a perspective on science, of how to theorize, and of method.

During my education, I developed a perspective on science, influenced by both Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Within the rules set by a specific paradigm, I attempt to elaborate upon the core idea(s) of such paradigm by asking new questions that build on existing ones, by using theories to formulate prelimirary answers to these questions, and finally by testing these new answers against empirical evidence with as much rigor as possible.

Regarding the formulation of explanations derived from theory, I was inspired by the principle of methodological individualism. Based on this principle, I learned the importance of analyzing social phenomena that are observable at the macro level by formulating explanations at the level of the individual.

Finally, regarding the method of research, I was taught both survey methodology and a variety of statistical tools that together can provide the rigor required to test the preliminary answers that were derived from theory.

Elective fertility cryo-preservation instigates debate in the Netherlands

New technology has that unique property of creating fascinating moral debates, which is especially so when it relates to new technology regarding life, death, or in this case: fertility. For a few years, technology has been available for the cryo-preservation of oocytes or ovarian tissue, which is used to help save the fertility of women who run the risk of losing it, for instance due to chemotherapy. Now, the question is raised whether such techniques should be made available to healthy women as well.
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The Sociologists: Field Trip to CERN

After his field trip to CERN, the sociologist envied the psysicists’ method …

Curving Normality Quantitative Social Science Carnival

You’re not a blogger if you don’t participate in Blog Carnival, so it seems. Blog carnival are a great way of finding new blogs, interesting posts, and creative bloggers all within a single topic of interest. The host of the carnival gathers a collection of posts, writes an editorial, and obviously links to the posts.

A vast number of carnivals already exist. Fascinating ones and content are found on The Giant’s Shoulders, on classic science papers, Carnival of the Mathematics (although I understand nearly half of it), Four Stone Hearth on anthropology in the widest (American) sense of that word, Cabinet of Curiosities, and The Skeptics Circle.
A longer list is found on Coturnix’s blog.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find a blogging carnival on sociology or social sciences in general. Therefor, I now introduce the Curving Normality Blogging Carnival on Quantitative Social Sciences. … Continue Reading

Sociology Today: June 10, 2008

The tuesday edition of the NRC-Handelsblad, my favorite newspaper, has a science page. So, it wasn’t difficult at all to find articles relating to the three main questions of sociology. But then again, it hasn’t been that difficult the last few days as well. Any suggestions for a more difficult source of news from one of my readers?
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Sociology Today: June 06 2008

Just started today, I wrote another Sociology Today, trying to catch up on the news. I’m not sure whether or not this is going to be a daily section, but perhaps that would be a nice challenge, forming a nice way of selecting the news that is important to me and to structure it neatly.

Today’s Source: NRC Handelsblad

Rationalization: Gene-technology and mode of thought ((Gentech moet van slecht imago af, NRC-Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p. 6))

While the debate on the selection of embryo’s (see yesterday’s Sociology Today) is still roaring in the Netherlands, Piet Schenkelaars argues that gene technology should be relieved from its bad image. This closely connects to the question how technology and our means of food production connects to the way people think. According to Gerhard Lenski, with his ecological-evolutionairy theory, mode of food-production in societies has developed, strongly influencing the structure of society (division of labour) and mode of thought (more activistic attitude). Perhaps the possibilities delivered by gen-tech and the promise to increase food production even further will have strong influences on human thought and morality indeed.

Inequality: Migrant educational equality ((Toename afhakers in eerste jaar van HBO, NRC Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p.3))

There is always a lot of news on inequality. What to choose? Today I did not select the poor position of rejected refugees in South Africa, but a more positive development regarding inequality. Absolutely one of the more important issues in the newspaper today. But no, for today a somewhat more optimistic issue.

In a short article on the increasing number of students not completing their higher education, it is also mentioned that the number of migrants finishing a higher education is relatively increasing. So, their unequal education position is starting to become more even.

Cohesion: Troubles with the Antilles people? ((Toename overlast Antilliaan in R’dam, NRC Handelsblad, 06-06-08, p. 3))

According to the newspaper article, people living in the Dutch city Rotterdam have had more nuisances and problems with immigrants from the Antilles. Clearly, this connects to the main sociological question of who has contact with whom, and, more directly, who has conflicts with whom. It could however have been categorized under ‘inequality’ just as well, for to a large extent different patterns of criminal behavior can be attributed to differences in social economic position.

The reason that I mention it, is that I think that the headline on the article is misleading: it sounds like that these people have started to misbehave more seriously. But, according to the police, it is due to their changed policy: the police started using a zero tolerance policy. Thereby, the conclusion should be that we’re only talking about a methodological issue, not a substantive one.

Sociology Today: June 05, 2008

My recent talk to students gave me a new idea for my website ‘Curving Normality’. During that talk, I used a recent newspaper to show how the three main three questions of sociology are easily found in the news.

I write a lot for this website, often about peer-reviewed research, methodology, and other aspects of science. The sociology, my core discipline, perhaps does not receive enough attention. Thus, I’ll start a new topic for this site today: Sociology Today. In it, I will regularly select a specific and single news-source, such as a newspaper and a and will try to find articles related to the three main questions of sociology: rationalization, inequality, and cohesion. I will very shortly comment all articles and obviously link to them wherever publicly available.

See it as a little game (does he manage realistically), see it as an interesting source of information, but mostly enjoy it. All of you are invited to request a specific newspaper for me to read and `sociologize’. As long as I can get my hands on it (on paper or digitally) I’m up for the challenge. Sociology indeed is everywhere around you!

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Six Blogs of Separation

As a social scientist I like to dream of my ideal data set. Every scientists does so once in a while, I imagine, for what questions could be answered if unlimited time, funds, and technological capacities were available! Wouldn’t a rocket scientist want to gather some of the soil on every known planet? I think a cognitive scientist would love to experiment on more people than are usually available. What would a present-day physicist want?A Larger Hadron Collider (LHC) perhaps? Recently, a communication researcher saw such a dream actually come through, when he gained access to data on all mobile phone calls made in one country over a several-weeks-period of time, resulting in 7,000,000 records.

The data-needs of a social scientist like me are quite more modest, but difficult enough to fulfill as they are. Performing surveys takes a big bite out of the budget available to many researchers, while the use of existing survey data (i.e. the large scale World Value Survey) restricts the researcher in what (type of) questions can be answered, for only the predefined survey-questions are available to the researcher.

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Guest article on Woopra.com

`Six Blogs of Separation‘, my guest article on Woopra.com, was published today. In it, I explore the utility of recent technological innovations to answer existing sociological research questions. The internet is still a relatively new medium and with the rise of blogging, it becomes really interesting to investigate the social consequences of this new way of connecting to other people. Will social cleavages diminish, or will existing social cleavages remain in the blogosphere? But, how to accurately combine information on both internet behavior with background- and other characteristics of interest to the social scientist?
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