Science aims to build knowledge about the natural world. This knowledge is open to question and revision as we come up with new ideas and discover new evidence. Because it has been tested, scientific knowledge is reliable.
Understanding what makes up our environment is essential to our individual and collective survival. This practice has led us to eliminate, for the most part, famine, and hunger. Increased our life expectancy and in the last 100 years created technologies that have improved our lives.
But this is not the part of science that gives us trouble. For the purpose of our course, the science of statistics and probability, as it pertains to the individual, is the aspect of science we are concerned with.
In the book “The Undiscovered Self” Carl Jung states
“The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories that are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. ”
Let me illustrate this point:
This bag has 40 rocks and it weights a total of 16 oz. Each rock ranges from 1 to 2″ in size. Therefore, we could draw the following conclusions;
- The average weight of the rock is .4 oz.
- The average size is 1.5″.
Although the statistical information helps us to “understand” the rocks as a whole, it does very little to appreciate the uniqueness and beauty of each individual rock.
Now think of how we use this method and apply it to children at school, our race relations, and class status. Yet, this is what we have done, and continue to do in most aspects of our lives. We have created “average standards” to categorize the value of an individual’s life.
The constant use of statistical analysis to draw conclusions on complex topics for expediency, then using those limited conclusions to determine a person’s life outcomes, is not only careless but outright wrong. It robs the individual of autonomy and self-discovery and gives power to things outside of them.