Reckoning History: Quantities, Measurements, and Computing

Harvard FAS

We reside in a number-driven world. From long divisions to population censuses, and from standardized testing to the personal computer, numerical tools direct how we make judgements, perceive the world, and “buff our stats” to succeed. Nonetheless, their dominance did not emerge out of nowhere. This seminar explores the global history of quantitative data and discusses the ways numerical reasoning came to shape the nature of knowledge as we know it.