Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

UID:

Format: 1 online resource (xiv, 310 pages)

Edition: Course Book

ISBN: 1-282-75217-0 , 9786612752179 , 1-4008-2161-4

Content: This investigation of the overwhelming appeal of quantification in the modern world discusses the development of cultural meanings of objectivity over two centuries. How are we to account for the current prestige and power of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is seen as desirable in social and economic investigation as a result of its successes in the study of nature. Theodore Porter is not content with this. Why should the kind of success achieved in the study of stars, molecules, or cells be an attractive model for research on human societies? he asks. And, indeed, how should we understand the pervasiveness of quantification in the sciences of nature? In his view, we should look in the reverse direction: comprehending the attractions of quantification in business, government, and social research will teach us something new about its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Drawing on a wide range of examples from the laboratory and from the worlds of accounting, insurance, cost-benefit analysis, and civil engineering, Porter shows that it is "exactly wrong" to interpret the drive for quantitative rigor as inherent somehow in the activity of science except where political and social pressures force compromise. Instead, quantification grows from attempts to develop a strategy of impersonality in response to pressures from outside. Objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts, quantification becoming most important where elites are weak, where private negotiation is suspect, and where trust is in short supply.

Note: Frontmatter -- , Contents -- , Preface -- , Acknowledgments -- , Introduction. Cultures of Objectivity -- , PART I: POWER IN NUMBERS -- , Chapter One. A World of Artifice -- , Chapter Two. How Social Numbers Are Made Valid -- , Chapter Three. Economic Measurement and the Values of Science -- , Chapter Four. The Political Philosophy of Quantification -- , PART II: TECHNOLOGIES OF TRUST -- , Chapter Five. Experts against Objectivity: Accountants and Actuaries -- , Chapter Six. French State Engineers and the Ambiguities of Technocracy -- , Chapter Seven. U.S. Army Engineers and the Rise of Cost-Benefit Analysis -- , PART III: POLITICAL AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITIES -- , Chapter Eight. Objectivity and the Politics of Disciplines -- , Chapter Nine. Is Science Made by Communities? -- , Notes -- , Bibliography -- , Index , English

Additional Edition: ISBN 0-691-02908-3

Language: English

Subjects: Sociology

DOI: 10.1515/9781400821617