“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.” William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) [Popular lectures and addresses, Vol. 1, “Electrical Units of Measurement”, 1883]
Though Lord Kelvin was unaware of the great strides that one can make by looking at bands on gels without any recourse to numbers, his exaggerated sentiment focuses attention on the possible benefits of biological numeracy.
One of the great traditions in biology’s more quantitative partner sciences such as chemistry and physics is the value placed on centralized, curated quantitative data. Whether thinking about the astronomical data that describes the motions of planets or the thermal and electrical conductivities of materials, the numbers themselves are a central part of the factual and conceptual backdrop for these fields. Indeed, often the act of trying to explain why numbers have the values they do ends up being an engine of discovery.