How the global became a framework for numerical communication: a comment

ABSTRACT

This article is a comment on contributions to a special volume of the European Review of History, “The International Statistical Institute, 1885–1938”

KEYWORDS:

• History of statistics
• history of knowledge
• history of international organizations
• European history
• history of statistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Jerven, Poor Numbers.

2. Desrosières, Politics of Large Numbers; and Diaz-Bone, “Discourses, Conventions, and Critique.”

3. Krüger, Gigerenzer, and Morgan, eds., Probabilistic Revolution.

4. Porter, Rise of Statistical Thinking.

5. Diaz-Bone, “Convention Theory.”

6. Brian, “Observations”; Schneider, “Internationalisierung.”

7. Steinmetz, Force of Comparison.

8. Albert and Werron, What in the World.

9. Speich Chassé, “Global Centre of Calculation.”

10. Bühler and Heintz, Seen but not Noticed.

11. Footnote 31 in the Paper by Bemmann. Correspondence between Coats and Meeker, ISI and LoN, March 2. Nov. 1920, in ILOA, Switzerland, L 23/2/1.

12. Latour, “Drawing Things Together.”

13. Bertillon, Texte des voeux, 1.

14. I take the notion of ‘technical internationalism’ from Kaiser and Schot, Writing the Rules, and have used it myself in different publications. It stands opposed to ‘legal internationalism’, that is, the task of turning international conflicts away from war into legal peace-finding. Speich Chassé, Technical internationalism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Speich Chassé

Daniel Speich Chassé is full professor of Global History at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. His research focuses on, among other interests, the history of economic statistics. A recent publication is D. Speich Chassé, ‘Technical Internationalism and Global Social Change: A Critical Look at the Historiography of the United Nations’, in What in the World? Understanding Global Social Change, edited by Mathias Albert and Tobias Werron, 243–264 (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021).