A Critical History of Cultural Indicators

Abstract

The topic of cultural measurement often evokes the quotation, ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.’ Although commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, there is no evidence that Einstein actually wrote this, as the legend goes, on the blackboard in his office at Princeton University. Based on an older expression, the phrase should probably instead be attributed to sociologist William Bruce Cameron (1963, 13), who writes: It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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