Theodore M. Porter

Not since the invention of the calculus, if ever, has a new field of mathematics found such extensive application as statistics in the twentieth-century. This book presents thoroughly and lucidly the diverse nineteenth-century origins of the mathematical tool of our day. Emphasizing the debt of science to nonspecialist intellectuals, Theodore Porter describes in detail the nineteenth-century background that produced the burst of modern statistical innovation of the early 1900s. He shows that the natural and social sciences were surprisingly interdependent. Statistics arose as a study of society, the science of the statist, and the pioneering statistical physicists and biologists, Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Galton, each introduced statistical models by pointing to analogies between his discipline and social science. The author also examines significant philosophical issues raised by the development of statistics in the 1800s. For a time, the evident success of statistical social science was held to be inconsistent with human free will. Gradually a consensus was developed that the need for statistical methods arose from the diversity of phenomena, which precluded explanation in detail. Debates concerning the nature of statistical knowledge were central to the new indeterminism that began to emerge at the end of the century. -- from back cover.

The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900

Theodore Porter is not content with this.

The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life

Trust in Numbers

The untold story of how hereditary data in mental hospitals gave rise to the science of human heredity In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They became obsessed with identifying weak or tainted families and anticipating the outcomes of their marriages. Genetics in the Madhouse is the untold story of how the collection and sorting of hereditary data in mental hospitals, schools for "feebleminded" children, and prisons gave rise to a new science of human heredity. In this compelling book, Theodore Porter draws on untapped archival evidence from across Europe and North America to bring to light the hidden history behind modern genetics. He looks at the institutional use of pedigree charts, censuses of mental illness, medical-social surveys, and other data techniques--innovative quantitative practices that were worked out in the madhouse long before the manipulation of DNA became possible in the lab. Porter argues that asylum doctors developed many of the ideologies and methods of what would come to be known as eugenics, and deepens our appreciation of the moral issues at stake in data work conducted on the border of subjectivity and science. A bold rethinking of asylum work, Genetics in the Madhouse shows how heredity was a human science as well as a medical and biological one.

The Unknown History of Human Heredity

Genetics in the Madhouse

Nigel Rapport

Kalpana Ram

Tord Larsen

Michael Blim

"Modes of objectification-different ways of producing and quantifying entities through categories and classes-are part of the cultural infrastructure of any society and any epoch. But we are now in an era that displays a passion for objectification and quantification unparalleled since the beginning of statistics. This volume identifies the most prominent contemporary forms of objectification: in the arts, medicine, finance, identity management, the rhetoric of science as well as the everyday. Different chapters show how these modes of objectification, measurement, and standardization shape the main dimensions of social life: meaning and representation, morality, and notions of thinghood and personhood. Moreover, quantification, measurement, and standardization are not simply ways of organizing pre-given entities. Rather, they are performative and generative technologies which create institutional objects, give rise to forms of objectivity and carry with them a range of normativities. Hence, the chapters also elaborate on the enduring link between forms of objectification and ritualism. At times, objectification is accomplished and fortified by ritualization. But ritual may also help disrupt the objectified, quantified world which meets resistance in the encounter with the actual fuzziness, flux, and capaciousness of reality. While the volume highlights the growing objectification and standardization of social life on the one hand, on the other it describes resistance to this trend"--

On the Limits and Effects of Ritually Fixing and Measuring Life

Objectification and Standardization

Cambridge University Press

Roy Porter

Ronald L. Numbers

Lorraine Daston

David C. Lindberg

Dorothy Ross

Mary Jo Nye

Katharine Park

A new and comprehensive examination of the history of the modern physical and mathematical sciences.

The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 5, The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences

An essential work on the origins of statistics The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 explores the history of statistics from the field's origins in the nineteenth century through to the factors that produced the burst of modern statistical innovation in the early twentieth century. Theodore Porter shows that statistics was not developed by mathematicians and then applied to the sciences and social sciences. Rather, the field came into being through the efforts of social scientists, who saw a need for statistical tools in their examination of society. Pioneering statistical physicists and biologists James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Francis Galton introduced statistical models to the sciences by pointing to analogies between their disciplines and the social sciences. A new preface by the author looks at the enduring relevance and significance of the book since its initial publication, and considers the current place of statistics in scientific research.

Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry. His faith in science grew out of a deeply moral quest, reflected also in his socialism and his efforts to find a new basis for relations between men and women. This biography recounts Pearson's extraordinary intellectual adventure and sheds new light on the inner life of science. Theodore Porter's intensely personal portrait of Pearson extends from religious crisis and sexual tensions to metaphysical and even mathematical anxieties. Pearson sought to reconcile reason with enthusiasm and to achieve the impersonal perspective of science without sacrificing complex individuality. Even as he longed to experience nature directly and intimately, he identified science with renunciation and positivistic detachment. Porter finds a turning point in Pearson's career, where his humanistic interests gave way to statistical ones, in his Grammar of Science (1892), in which he attempted to establish scientific method as the moral educational basis for a refashioned culture. In this original and engaging book, a leading historian of modern science investigates the interior experience of one man's scientific life while placing it in a rich tapestry of social, political, and intellectual movements.

The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age

Karl Pearson

An account of the history of the social sciences since the late eighteenth century.

The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 7, The Modern Social Sciences

The untold story of how hereditary data in mental hospitals gave rise to the science of human heredity In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. Genetics in the Madhouse is the untold story of how the collection of hereditary data in asylums and prisons gave rise to a new science of human heredity. Theodore Porter looks at the institutional use of innovative quantitative practices—such as pedigree charts and censuses of mental illness—that were worked out in the madhouse long before the manipulation of DNA became possible in the lab. Genetics in the Madhouse brings to light the hidden history behind modern genetics and deepens our appreciation of the moral issues at stake in data work conducted at the border of subjectivity and science.

Theodore M. Porter

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