Georg Simmel: Quantitative Money
on Tuesday, January 3, 2023Meaning of Georg Simmel Money Quote: saying financial economy has an exactitude to economic life which can’t be applied to personal lives. Georg Simmel said:
“The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones” — Georg Simmel
Share the Georg Simmel Money quote image above on your site:
Short Link to this Quote:
In this quote, Georg Simmel is commenting on how the development of money-based economies has influenced modern life and ways of thinking. Some key points:
- He notes that practical, everyday life under a money economy requires “calculative exactness” and quantitative assessments like weighing and calculating that are similar to scientific methods.
- Money allows the world to be “transformed” or understood according to mathematical formulas and numerical values in a way analogous to natural science.
- Simmel suggests that monetary systems have filled people’s days with reducing qualitative aspects like worth, value or meaning to quantitative measurements like amounts of money.
Overall, the quote seems to posit that the rise of money economies has shaped a more analytical, quantitatively focused lens through which modern societies approach practical and commercial issues – a perspective aligned with scientific rationalism that emphasizes numeric metrics over intangible qualities. The influence of money is seen extending even into how people conceptualize and measure aspects of life, work and value itself.
Birthday: March 1, 1858 – Death: September 26, 1918