Description
Book SynopsisWhat has been the value of numerical values? Beginning with the late eighteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, this title includes essays that support the view that centralizing states have been the major promoters of numerical precision.
Trade Review"Standardization and precision measurement have often been taken for granted by historians of science. Norton Wise should therefore be applauded for having put together this excellent collection of essays that places the topic ... at the center of historical attention."--Sven Widmalm, Science "Sheds new light on and thus makes an important contribution to our understanding of the sometimes surprising results of mathematicization."--Dennis H. Rouvray, Endeavour "[A] pleasure to read, and it reveals much about quantification, the trustworthiness of numbers, the role of the professions, and the relations between science and technology... "--Mary S. Morgan, Economic History Review "Taken singly, each of the essays is of unusually high quality; taken together, they are the best introduction available in English to the diverse practices, applications, and morals of precision."--Lorraine Daston, Isis "... explores how the concept of precision emerged and came to be valued in Western culture... What is clear from this book is that the perceived value of precision lies as much with how it is attained, and by whom, as with the degree of precision itself."--New Scientist
Table of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction31Quantification, Precision, and Accuracy: Determinations of Population in the Ancien Regime172A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France393"The Nicety of Experiment": Precision of Measurement and Precision of Reasoning in Late Eighteenth-Century Chemistry724Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part I - Traveling925The Meaning of Precision: The Exact Sensibility in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany1036Accurate Measurement Is an English Science1357Precision and Trust: Early Victorian Insurance and the Politics of Calculation1738The Images of Precision: Helmholtz and the Graphical Method in Physiology1989Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part II - The Age of Steam and Telegraphy22210The Morals of Energy Metering: Constructing and Deconstructing the Precision of the Victorian Electrical Engineer's Ammeter and Voltmeter23911Precision Implemented: Henry Rowland, the Concave Diffraction Grating, and the Analysis of Light28312The Laboratory of Theory or What's Exact about the Exact Sciences?31113Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part III - "Today Precision Must be Commonplace"352Index363
