A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society - Couverture souple

Poovey, Mary

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0226675262 ISBN 13 : 9780226675268

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 1998

Synopsis

Exploring such questions as "how did fact become modernity's most favoured unit of knowledge?", this text contains ideas and texts from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. It shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government; how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts; and how belief - whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity - remained essential to the production of knowledge.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

How did the fact become modernity's most favored unit of knowledge? How did description come to seem separable from theory in the precursors of economics and the social sciences?

Mary Poovey explores these questions in A History of the Modern Fact, ranging across an astonishing array of texts and ideas from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. She shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government, how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts, and how belief—whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity—remained essential to the production of knowledge.

Illuminating the epistemological conditions that have made modern social and economic knowledge possible, A History of the Modern Fact provides important contributions to the history of political thought, economics, science, and philosophy, as well as to literary and cultural criticism.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226675262
• ISBN 13: 9780226675268
• Reliure: Broché
• Langue: anglais
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 436