What is quality? Why do it energize us so much? Can we measure it? In a new Smartbear blogpost I trace the philosophical history of quality, and what that might mean for us.
Socrates started his quest to find out what knowledge is by taking on the lurking trap of the relativists, Protagoras and Heraclitus. Both meant that the world was in constant flux and that the only thing we could know was the sensations we get through our perceptions, or as Protagoras formulated it: “Man is the measure of all things.”
We recognize this stance from today’s definition of quality in business settings: Quality is the extent to which a product or service meets and/or exceeds a customer’s expectation. Quality is relative to the need of a user and is expressed as the right combination of price and quality. High quality, per se, is not desirable. Man is the measure.
That was not the view of Plato.
