The Values of Precision (Paperback)

M. Norton Wise

ISBN 10: 0691016011 / ISBN 13: 9780691016016

Published by Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1997

About this Item

Paperback. This finite study examines how exactitude has come to occupy such a prominent place in Western culture. Beginning with the late 18th century and continuing into the 20th, the essays here support the view that centralizing states and large-scale commercial enterprises have long been the major promoters of numerical precision. Photos & illus. What 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. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780691016016

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Values of Precision (Paperback)
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, New Jersey
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691016011
• ISBN 13: 9780691016016
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

The Values of Precision examines how exactitude has come to occupy such a prominent place in Western culture. What has been the value of numerical values? Beginning with the late eighteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, the essays in this volume support the view that centralizing states--with their increasingly widespread bureaucracies for managing trade, taxation, and armies--and large-scale commercial enterprises--with their requirements for standardization and mass production--have been the major promoters of numerical precision. Taking advantage of the resources available, scientists and engineers have entered a symbiotic relationship with state and industry, which in turn has led to increasingly refined measures in ever-widening domains of the natural and social world. At the heart of this book, therefore, is an inquiry into the capacity of numbers and instruments to travel across boundaries of culture and materials.


Many of the papers focus attention on disagreements about the significance and the credibility of particular sorts of measurements deployed to support particular claims, as in the measures of the population of France, the electrical resistance of copper, or the solvency of insurance companies. At the same time they display the deeply cultural character of precision values. Contributors to the volume include Ken Alder, Graeme J. N. Gooday, Jan Golinski, Frederic L. Holmes, Kathryn M. Olesko, Theodore M. Porter, Andrea Rusnock, Simon Schaffer, George Sweetnam, Andrew Warwick, and M. Norton Wise.

About the Author

M. Norton Wise is Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies for the Program in History of Science, Princeton University.