quantification culture vs figuration culture
the problem with mapping reality is that reality is infinite, so any given map is going to be incomplete. but if you don’t make any maps then you have no way of negotiating reality at all. the history of intellectual culture, then, or more broadly, the history of people trying to understand reality, is the history of the tension between believing that it is possible to make models, and knowing that any model will be incomplete. it is essentially a history of call and response between the protectors of these two equally true beliefs.
rational, scientific intellectual cultures are the ones that attempt to rigorously model in an increasingly fractal way. they quantify patterns. when they encounter unquantifiable phenomena, they tend to assign temporary values. a symbol for pi, or infinity, or irrationality. but sometimes also phlogiston, or a word for a set of misunderstood symptoms.
but when people need to address the (in)completeness of models, or model in a way that suggests the incomplete space without being beholden to impossible quantification, they tend to get figurative and ironic and things like that. when art uses metaphor, for example, it causes one to quickly intuit associations between things that would be too difficult to model otherwise. a picture is worth a thousand words, and all of that. cultures of figuration tend to be either mystical or irreverent. or both.
the revulsion quantification people feel towards figuration people is the revulsion of ‘you are giving up way way too quickly, and it will have bad consequences.’ the revulsion figuration people feel towards quantification people is the revulsion of ‘you are leaving out something incredibly important, and it will have bad consequences.’ either group can produce lazy, shoddy models that aren’t even good quantification or figuration in the first place. though the question of whether that shoddy model would be improved by better quantification or better figuration is something else.
most people tend to have both of these cultures contained within themselves at any given moment.