Victorians and numbers : statistics and society in nineteenth century Britain / Lawrence Goldman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Goldman, Lawrence, 1957- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Statistics--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Statistics.

Great Britain--Intellectual life--19th century.

Great Britain.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (436 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2022.

Biography/History:

Lawrence Goldman was born in London and educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, he taught British and American History for three decades in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St. Peter's College, and Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004-2014. Latterly he was Director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His publications include books on Victorian social science and the history of workers' education, and a biography of the historian and political thinker R. H. Tawney. He is now Emeritus Fellow of St. Peter's College, Oxford.

Summary:

A defining feature of Victorian Britain was its fascination with statistics, and this study shows how data influenced every aspect of Victorian culture and thought, from the methods of natural science and the struggle against disease, to the development of social administration, and the arguments and conflicts between social classes.

Contents:

Prologue : Statistics at the zenith : the International Statistical Congress, London 1860

Political arithmetic and statistics 1660-1840. Before the Victorians

The origins of the statistical movement 1825-1835. Cambridge and London : the Cambridge network and the Statistical Society of London

Manchester : the Manchester Statistical Society : industry, sectarianism and reform

Clerkenwell : the London Statistical Society and artisan statisticians, 1825-30

Intellectual influences. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace : statistics and computing

Richard Jones and William Whewell : statistics, induction, and political economy

Adolphe Quetelet : social physics, determinism, and 'the average man'

Alexander von Humboldt : Humboldtian science, natural theology, and the unity of nature

The opposition to statistics : Disraeli, Dickens, Ruskin, and Carlyle

Statistics at mid-century. Mapping and defining British statistics

Buckle's fatal History : making statistics popular

Medicine and statistics at mid-century

Liberal decline and reinvention. The International Statistical Congress 1851-78 : conservative nationalism versus liberal internationalism

The end of the statistical movement : Francis Galton, variation and eugenics

Social statistics in the 1880s : the Industrial Remuneration Conference, London 1885

Conclusion : From statistics to big data 1822-2022.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed on January 18, 2022).

This edition also issued in print: 2022.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Goldman, Lawrence Victorians and Numbers

ISBN:

0-19-194300-2

0-19-266340-2

0-19-266341-0

OCLC:

1293256729