Measurement is the base of Natural Sciences. It adds precision to our knowledge but, in the Human Sciences it is not as easy to measure things up. Thoughts cannot be measured because they are not a discrete series of ideas, but a continuous flow that melt into one another.

What Human Sciences has don is translating qualitative concepts into measureable ones. RankCountryMedals total 1USA101 2Germany65 3Russia63 4China50 11Canada22 Who really won the Centennial Olympics?Who really won the Centennial Olympics?

CountryGoldSilverBronzeMedals total USA Germany Russia China Canada Who really won the Centennial Olympics?Who really won the Centennial Olympics? RankCountryGoldSilverBronzePoints 1USA Russia Germany China Canada Here Russia and Germany change places RankCountryPoints per million 1Tonga20 2Bahamas6.6 3Cuba4.6 25Canada1.3 37USA0.9

Rankings for measuring who won the Centennial Olympics may change more and more. We could think of age distribution, and measure based only on the ages for suitable athletes, that way we would get points per million of eligible age. Other rankings could be comparative wealth (athletes from wealthy countries have better training facilities), or ‘home advantage’ (a team playing home tends to do better). Different criteria will always bring different results although we try to establish a common scale in every case. So, do you think it is possible to answer the question ‘Which country won the Centennial Olympics?’ … does it matter? Who really won the Centennial Olympics?Who really won the Centennial Olympics?

So far the conclusion seems to be that we will always run into problems when we try to measure different things… when people try to do this in everyday life we say they are comparing ‘apples and oranges’, but in economics, politics or demography among many others, it seems not to be a problem depending on the results each study is trying to achieve.