The scale of the mind

How can we explain this feeling shared by many of us, young and old, of not really grasping what the numbers cover? Why do we have such a hard time visualizing what the thousands or billions are? In The Spirit Ladder, Bunpei Yorifuji offers a personal and informed reflection on our relationship to numbers. By questioning our way of thinking about the world in terms of statistics and the omnipresence of numbers in our daily life, he observes a gap between our ability to "put numbers" to the world, and to "feel" it. By identifying the imperfections of the most commonly used units of measurement, the author proposes in this book to create new ones, better suited to understanding certain everyday phenomena that we are unfortunately often unable to quantify. Thus, the author proposes to use the "Minami" to measure the feeling shared between two people who are more than friends, but not yet lovers; the “Thankyou” to quantify this feeling of being able to count on a friend in the event of a hard blow; and the "Factory boat" would be a way of quantifying the feeling of overwork at work. Through this reflection on numbers, Bunpei Yorifuji encourages everyone to reappropriate the way of perceiving the world and to adapt the measurement tools to our needs.