He's an English philosopher of a particular type.
Quote:
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Unable to tolerate the prospect that the cycles of conflict will continue, many are anxious to find continuing improvement in the human lot. Who can fail to sympathise with them? Lacking any deeper faith and incapable of living with doubt, it is only natural that believers in reason should turn to the sorcery of numbers.
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What Gray is talking about here, and throughout the essay, is the failure of sociological imagination present in all statistical analysis that purports to tell the whole story without considering the particulars of history and culture.
I mean, if violent crime was decreased by the cultural effects of mass incarceration and abortion, then a different kind of violence is being perpetrated by the State with arguably more pernicious effects.