n an age when development is charted through graphs, forecasts and statistics, the dominance of quantifiability as the cornerstone of societal progress is nearly unchallenged. From GDP to literacy rates and from life expectancy to internet penetration, the modern world is awash with indicators, each purporting to capture the trajectory of human progress. Yet, as Pakistan’s example starkly reveals, belief in quantifiable metrics does not necessarily translate into meaningful progress.

Despite decades of policy fixation on economic indicators and statistical targets, the country remains mired in socio-economic stagnation, fragile governance and escalating violence. This contradiction raises a fundamental question: can numbers truly capture the spirit of development? This writer argues that we must reclaim human values, such as compassion, empathy and modesty as the animating force behind progress—transforming the quantifiable into a vessel for the immeasurable?

The reign of quantifiability

Modern epistemology and governance are built upon what Max Weber called “rationalisation” —a process whereby reason, calculation and predictability dominate human life. “The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation,” wrote Weber, “and above all, by the disenchantment of the world.” This disenchantment finds expression in our obsession with numbers. Quantifiability provides a seductive promise: that society’s deepest needs and desires can be ordered, measured and optimised. The World Bank’s development reports, the IMF’s economic forecasts and the UNDP’s Human Development Index all stem from the conviction that what matters can be measured.

This approach does not lack merit. Indeed, quantification has illuminated vast swathes of human suffering, enabling targeted interventions and evidence-based policymaking. Yet, as Albert Einstein warned, “not everything that counts, can be counted; and not everything that can be counted, counts.” The utilitarian pursuit of statistical progress often marginalises the intangible—those vital human dimensions that resist enumeration but lie at the heart of a just society. Thus, truth, goodness and aesthetics need to be cultivated in all earnestness. This is possible if some equilibrium is struck between the education of liberal arts and sciences of the quantifiable.

A paradox of progress

Pakistan exemplifies this paradox. The state’s bureaucratic machinery and development institutions remain deeply invested in quantifiable metrics. Five-year plans, budgetary allocations and national surveys are replete with figures meant to track progress. This apparent methodological rigor belies the persistent fragility of Pakistan’s social fabric. Poverty, militancyand sectarian violence have not only endured but in many cases escalated, despite statistically informed policies. In recent years, a growing number of thinkers and scholars have been turning their attention toward philosophy, literature, and history—not merely as academic pursuits but as essential tools to rehumanise the epistemic enterprise. This renewed focus on the humanities reflects a broader intellectual effort to restore depth, meaning and ethical orientation to our ways of knowing.

Unfortunately, in Pakistan, the sociomoral fabric has been deeply eroded. This rupture cannot be mended unless the humanities are restored to their rightful place in the national curriculum. A disconnection from the past has produced a kind of intellectual amnesia, severing people from the rich moral, philosophical and historical traditions that once informed our collective identity. Reviving this connection is not just an academic necessity but also a civilisational imperative. The intellectual ethos embedded in our own tradition that once produced polymaths like Al-Farabi, Al Beruni and Ibn Khaldun must be reclaimed and reinvigorated.

This global intellectual shift is not without precedent. Philosophers like Charles Taylor, in works such as Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment, seek to explore how art, poetry and metaphysics can offer a counter-narrative to the disenchantment of modernity. Similarly, Martha Nussbaum has argued consistently for the role of the humanities in cultivating empathy, critical thinking and democratic citizenship, most notably in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Likewise, Byung-Chul Han critiques the hyper-digital, performance-driven culture of the present and calls for a return to contemplation, cultural memory and ethical reflection—values rooted in the humanities.

These scholarly interventions make it clear that the future of any meaningful intellectual project—particularly in societies undergoing moral and social fragmentation—depends on the revival of humanistic disciplines. Without them, knowledge risks becoming purely technical, decontextualised and ultimately dehumanising.

The disjunction between statistical progress and lived reality may partly arise from what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil”—the deadening of moral imagination when systems prioritise procedure over principle. In the Pakistani context, the overvaluation of technical rationality and under-appreciation of ethical sensibility has enabled a society where economic policy can advance without confronting inequality and literacy campaigns can proliferate without cultivating a culture of thought.

Moreover, the state’s failure to anchor its quantifiable goals in moral values has created fertile ground for alienation, radicalismand violence. When society is reduced to a competition for scarce resources and visible success, violence becomes the logical extension of policy. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18); in the absence of a shared moral vision, metrics become an engine of dehumanisation rather than development.

Rehumanising development

What, then, is to be done? The challenge is not to abandon quantifiability, but to reorient it—to view numbers not as ends in themselves but as tools in the service of the immeasurable. Development must be guided by an ethical compass, one that places compassion, empathy and modesty at its core.

Compassion, as the capacity to feel with others, calls us to see beyond aggregates to individual suffering. Empathy, the ability to enter the worldview of another, demands policies that recognise historical and cultural contexts. Modesty, a virtue rarely celebrated in development discourse, urges humility in the face of complexity and warns against the hubris of data-driven technocracy.

This triad forms the metaphysical bedrock of any truly humane society. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “The only journey is the one within.” The journey of development, too, must begin from within—not merely within the individual, but within the moral framework that informs our societal ambitions.

Toward a new philosophy of progress

A philosophy of development rooted in the immeasurable need not dispense with indicators; rather, it will reinterpret them. High GDP will no longer be celebrated without reference to equity. Literacy will be lauded not merely as a statistical gain, but as the expansion of human curiosity and civic engagement. Military spending will not be weighed in rupees alone, but in moral cost. In such a paradigm, quantifiability becomes an outward manifestation of inward values.

John Ruskin once remarked, “There is no wealth but life.” The wealth of a nation lies not in its foreign reserves or stock indices, but in its capacity to foster lives of dignity, purposeand compassion. Only when development is measured against this deeper horizon can it become truly sustainable and just.

The quantification of development has given us powerful tools, but in elevating these tools to a worldview, we risk losing sight of what truly matters. Pakistan’s experience illustrates the limitations of a paradigm of progress divorced from ethics. In reclaiming the virtues of compassion, empathy and modesty, we do not reject modernity but humanise it. We do not renounce measurement, but remind ourselves that the most vital dimensions of life resist measurement. As Dostoevsky once observed, “Man is a mystery… I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.” To be truly human—and to develop human societies—we must once again learn to value the unquantifiable.

The writer is a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.