The Values of Precision

M. Norton Wise

ISBN 10: 0691016011 / ISBN 13: 9780691016016

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 1997

Beschreibung

nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - 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.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9780691016016

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: The Values of Precision
• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsjahr: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 0691016011
• ISBN-13: 9780691016016
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zustand: Neu
• Abmessungen: 229B x 152 H x 23 T Millimeter Breite: 229 mm, Höhe: 152 mm, Tiefe: 23 mm
• Gewicht: 622 Gramm

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Edited by M. Norton Wise