Theodore Porter

"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 rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. ... , who invented the phrase "political arithmetic" and is thought by many to have had a hand in the composition of 's work, was in full accord with his friend as to the purpose of these studies. Political arithmetic was, in his view, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government."

"Although ' seems to work as a memorable , it can mislead. The book is not about implicit trust, but reluctance and hesitation. Numbers that appear sufficiently routine may pass under the radar, but when conflicting interests are at stake, they are readily challenged. They often require . This typically involves putting aside deep meanings and convictions in favor of compromise and convention. The title came to me in reaction to my editor's suggestion of "Truth in Numbers," which I rejected at once."

"Beginning in 1892, when he took up statistics as his scientific vocation, Karl Pearson devoted himself relentlessly to a project of almost universal quantification. This work, the invention of a , defined one of the landmark transitions in the history of the sciences, or indeed of public rationality."

"A bitter debate in the early twentieth century between "biometricians" and "Mendelians" about how best to study seemed to end in a victory for genetics, defined by a focus on discrete nuggets of hereditary causation for which in 1909 coined the term "." The new genetics emphasized , , and s. Despite geneticists' intense engagement with eugenics and medicine, Homo sapiens was not their preferred organism. It was too resistant to laboratory manipulation and had too long a generation time in comparison to , s, and viruses."

"Our scientific culture, and much of our public life, is based on trust in numbers. They are commonly accepted as the means to achieving objectivity in analysis, certainty in conclusions, and truth. Numbers tell us about the health of our society (as in the rates of occurrence of unwanted behavior), and they provide a demarcation between what is accepted as safe and what is believed to be dangerous. In Trust in Numbers, Theodore Porter ... unpacks this assumption and uses history to show how such a trust may sometimes be based less on the solidity of the numbers themselves than on the needs of expert and client communities. ... Porter is to be congratulated for showing how intimate can be the mixture of , real and pseudo-quantification, awareness and self-deception, and vision and fantasy, in the invocation of trust in numbers. His historical insights can provide the materials we need for a debate on quality in quantities, a debate which is long overdue."