A HISTORY OF THE MODERN FACT Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society

Poovey, Mary

ISBN 10: 0226675262 / ISBN 13: 9780226675268

Published by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1998

About this Item

419 pages in excellent condition. Illustrated softcovers with yellow titles. No wear. FINE.

Seller Inventory # 215156

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A HISTORY OF THE MODERN FACT Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society
• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London
• Publication Date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226675262
• ISBN 13: 9780226675268
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine
• Book Type: Book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Economics
  • Science
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Mary Poovey has recently retired from her position as Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University. She is the author of numerous books, including A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society and Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain.