Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-198)

Introduction. The tyranny of numbers -- A short history of counting -- Bentham and the measure of happiness -- Damage by numbers -- Robert Malthus and the death of moral statistics -- The feelgood factor -- Frederick Taylor's time machine -- Toward an ethical profit line -- The fine balance of John Maynard Keynes -- The new indicators -- Edgar Cahn and the price of everything -- The bottom line

"The counters are taking over our lives. For centuries, the humankind has attempted to divine meaning from life through numbers. The more materialistic we become, the more we need to quantify everything. Jeremy Bentham once defined the aim of politics as "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Over the last two hundred years our means of quantification have become increasingly disturbing. Happiness has become quantifiable; surveys that "measure" emotional intelligence find that Mexicans are the happiest people on earth and the Japanese are the most miserable, love is measured by the number or orgasms, crime rates can be made to correspond to random speeches or sun spots, and a city's success is judged according to the number of vegetarian restaurants versus the number of McDonald's." "In our scientific and technological numbers-obsessed age, are we losing touch with our instincts? To what extent can statistics easily translate into happiness? This interdisciplinary book spans the impact of numbers on the very tenets of civilization: philosophy, science, art, and business."--BOOK JACKET