A History of the Modern Fact – Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth & Society: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society - Hardcover

Poovey, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226675254 ISBN 13: 9780226675251

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1998

Synopsis

Exploring such questions as "how did fact become modernity's most favoured unit of knowledge?", this text contains ideas and texts from the publication of the first British manual on double-entry bookkeeping in 1588 to the institutionalization of statistics in the 1830s. It shows how the production of systematic knowledge from descriptions of observed particulars influenced government; how numerical representation became the privileged vehicle for generating useful facts; and how belief - whether figured as credit, credibility, or credulity - remained essential to the production of knowledge.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Poovey has recently retired from her position as Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University. She is the author of numerous books, including A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society and Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0226675254
• ISBN 13: 9780226675251
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 448