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They say that new instruments create new sciences - that the development of telescopes created the modern science of astronomy or that better microscopes lead to the development of germ theory - and I think the same is true of the social sciences. In my mind one of the most remarkable aspects of the Enlightenment was the emerge of new paradigms for conceiving of society as a discrete social object that could be viewed from a state-centric top down perspective. Suddenly instead of kingdoms or domains you have populations of individuals and the states that can best manage and control their populations stand in a clear advantage over the states that cannot. One of the factors underlying this change is the emergence of the modern discipline of statistics. Today we more or less take for granted that you can discover mathematical regularities in society that yield useful predictions or lend themselves to further analysis. However, this was a radical new discovery when it was first made. Keeping track of things like birth and death rates or annual mortality statistics made it possible for scholars and bureaucrats to countenance political goals that would have never even occured to a medieval monarch or their advisers. A new way of understanding society, relying on mathematical analysis of behaviour at the population level, helped create the modern world we take for granted. From the wikipedia on the history of stats: Wikipedia, History of Statistics posted:The birth of statistics is often dated to 1662, when John Graunt, along with William Petty, developed early human statistical and census methods that provided a framework for modern demography. He produced the first life table, giving probabilities of survival to each age. His book Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality used analysis of the mortality rolls to make the first statistically based estimation of the population of London. He knew that there were around 13,000 funerals per year in London and that three people died per eleven families per year. He estimated from the parish records that the average family size was 8 and calculated that the population of London was about 384,000; this is the first known use of a ratio estimator. Laplace in 1802 estimated the population of France with a similar method; see Ratio estimator § History for details. I've always thought it was really interesting to relate the philosophical and political developments of the early modern period with the development of new ways of viewing society. While many ancient authors wrote on the topic of population sizes or birth rates none of the writings known to us demonstrate the conceptual tools that would have been necessary to develop these scattered observations into an actual science of populations. Many of the best and worst aspects of the modern world can be traced back to this growing awareness of demographics and the almost inescapable temptation that this knowledge brings to try and consciously manipulate society on a much deeper level than the ancients would have dreamed possible.
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# ¿ Feb 27, 2019 22:22 |
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# ¿ May 16, 2024 04:54 |