{"title":"STATISTICS AS SOCIAL SCIENCE","authors":"T. Porter","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvxcrz1v.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxcrz1v.8","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses statistics as social science. The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or annuity rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. Political arithmetic was, according to William Petty, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government. Implicit in the use by political arithmeticians of social numbers was the belief that the wealth and strength of the state depended strongly on the number and character of its subjects. Political arithmetic was supplanted by statistics in France and Great Britain around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift in terminology was accompanied by a subtle mutation of concepts that can be seen as one of the most important in the history of statistical thinking.","PeriodicalId":148909,"journal":{"name":"The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125263448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE SCIENCE OF UNCERTAINTY","authors":"Rajan Gurukkal","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780199490363.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780199490363.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter virtually illuminates the invisible universe of subatomic dynamics through mathematical formalism and probability theory rather than empiricism based on instrumentation. A series of strange discoveries go into the making of the New Science and a discussion of the process constitutes the core of this chapter. Max Planck’s proposition of the Quanta, Niels Bohr’s discovery of objects’ non-observable and immeasurable complementary properties, Erwin Schrodinger’s interpretation of the object-subject split as a figment of imagination, Werner Karl Heisenberg’s enunciation of the Uncertainty Principle precluding the possibility of precision about certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, Kurt Friedrich Godel’s thesis of Undecidability based on his incompleteness theorems demonstrating certain inherent limits of provability about formal axiomatic theories, Murray Gell-Mann’s theory of Complexity in particle physics, Richard Feynman’s thesis on quantum mechanics, and Einstein’s theories of relativity, literally shook Newtonian physics of certainty with problems of uncertainty and subjectivity. At the end, the chapter makes a review of speculative thoughts and imagination about the dynamics of subatomic micro-universe as well as the mechanics of the galactic macro-universe.","PeriodicalId":148909,"journal":{"name":"The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133582089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}