The attacks against Nate Silver seem to be dying down now, but their absurdity continues to linger. Critics of Silver's methodology (or rather critics of the results of his methodology) have gone personal — too personal. It's bizarre: They don't like his mathematical modeling, therefore they call him a namby-pamby. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Sullivan have already summarized the various refutations. But to be honest, the refutations were never that interesting in and of themselves. The interesting question is what provoked the peculiarly personal hatred in the first place? Why would a disagreement about polling lead to an assault on the pollster's manliness? Why do these guys hate Nate Silver so much?

One answer is that Silver is a threat to the pundit class as a whole. I just don't see it. Even in the past two weeks, the major events of the election have been well beyond the scope of FiveThirtyEight's insights, and obviously so. Romney changed the election narrative by massively winning the first debate, by talking. Obama's response to the storm has been a flawless political performance. Polling does not explain the effects of these events or what they mean. Nor does Silver pretend they do. What Silver may have ended is political pundits making predictions unsupported by evidence, and good riddance to garbage. Otherwise, Silver isn't threatening any bloviator's job. Not really. And partisanship doesn't explain the hatred for Silver, either. The vituperativeness of the attacks have been startling even by the incredibly grim standards of American political discourse in 2012.

The sociology of mathematics throws light on the matter, I think, in particular a little-known 1982 essay by the philosopher of science David Bloor, "Polyhedra and the Abominations of Leviticus." I've always been a little obsessed with this essay, which compares the way that German mathematics departments responded to difficulties in Eulerian geometry with the way primitive tribes ritually respond to polluted animals, and (spoiler alert) finds their ways of responses virtually identical. "Whether it be a counterexample to a proof; an animal which does not fit into the local taxonomy; or a deviant who violates the current moral norms, the same range of reactions is generated." No matter how high the level of thinking, the stone-age responses to category-violation apply. It's true even for pure geometry.

Basically, Nate Silver is an animal who does not fit into the local taxonomy of political media. Therefore they have tried to turn him into a deviant. The sophistication of his method, which you can read about in his excellent book, makes him freakish. He is an opinion-former who expresses his views through polls, and he is a pollster who considers his polls a form of opinion. This is not the way that business is usually done, with numbers being indisputable numbers, and opinion being the only way of giving meaning to the numbers. Silver has violated the categories, and therefore he has been excluded the way the ancient Israelites excluded the honey badger or German mathematics departments excluded Eulerian anomalies. It is literally the oldest story in the world.

Silver himself has responded with a bit of old-fashioned category-reassertion himself, proposing to Joe Scarborough a $2,000 dollar bet on the outcome of the election. The public editor of The New York Times has rebuked him. But how else was he to respond? When the attacks are primitive, the only appropriate response is primitive. When the apes come to kick you out of the tribe, the only thing you can do is thump your chest.

MORE: Charles P. Pierce on the Enemies of Nate Silver and Stephen Marche on Silver's New Book

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Stephen Marche Stephen Marche is a novelist who writes a monthly column for Esquire magazine about culture.

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