(2000). ROBERT LESLIE ELLIS AND JOHN STUART MILL ON THE ONE AND THE MANY OF FREQUENTISM. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 251-274.

Boltzmann’s equilibrium theory has not received by the scholars the attention it deserves. It was always interpreted as a mere generalization of Maxwell’s work or, in the most favorable case, a sketch of some ideas more consistently developed in the 1872 memoir. In this paper, I try to prove that this view is ungenerous. My claim is that in the theory developed during the period 1866-1871 the generalization of Maxwell’s distribution was mainly a mean to get a more general scope: (...) a theory of the equilibrium of a system of mechanical points from a general point of view. To face this issue Boltzmann analyzed and discussed probabilistic assumptions so that his equilibrium theory cannot be considered a purely mechanical theory. I claim also that the special perspective adopted by Boltzmann and his view about probabilistic requirements played a role in the transition to the non equilibrium theory of 1872. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (shrink)

This article reflects on how data circulations and data analysis have become a central and routine part of contemporary life; it does this through the lens of a particular cultural form: the game of football. More specifically, the article focuses upon the role of data in the production and playing of football, with the suggestion that forms of measurement and pattern recognition are now central to the performance of footballers and the recruitment and organization of squads. The article reflects on (...) what this case study reveals about the implications of data, metrics and analytics for contemporary culture and suggests that we can use examples like football to see how embedded these data-processes are in the social world. This article presents the concept of productive measures as one means for analysing such developments. (shrink)

Since 1984, the idea of health equity has proliferated throughout public health discourse with little mainstream critique for its variability and distance from its original articulation signifying social transformation and a commitment to social justice. In the years since health equity’s emergence and proliferation, it has taken on a seemingly endless range of invocations and deployments, but it most often translates into proactive and apolitical discourse and practice. In Margaret Whitehead’s influential characterization, achieving health equity requires determining what is inequitable (...) by examining and judging the causes of inequalities in the context of what is going on in the rest of society. However, it also remains unclear how or if public health actors examine and judge the causes of health inequality. In this article, we take the concept of health equity itself as an object of study and consider the ways in which its widespread deployment has entailed a considerable emptying of its semantic and political content. We point toward equity’s own discursive productivity as well as the quantifying imperative embedded within evidentiary norms that govern knowledge making, and performance management regimes that govern public health practices. Under current conditions of knowledge making and performance evaluation, a range of legitimate action and inaction is produced at the same time that more socially transformative action is legitimately curtailed—not merely by politics, but by the rules of the field in which public health actors work. Ultimately, meaningful progress on a normative ethical idea like health equity will require both substantial philosophical content and an analysis of what is going on in the rest of society. (shrink)

In light of recent technological innovations and discourses around data and algorithmic analytics, scholars of many stripes are attempting to develop critical agendas and responses to these developments. In this mutual interview, three scholars discuss the stakes, ideas, responsibilities, and possibilities of critical data studies. The resulting dialog seeks to explore what kinds of critical approaches to these topics, in theory and practice, could open and make available such approaches to a broader audience.

Politically, Europe has been unable to address itself to a constituted polity and people as more than an agglomeration of nation-states. From the resurgence of nationalisms to the crisis of the single currency and the unprecedented decision of a member state to leave the European Union, core questions about the future of Europe have been rearticulated: Who are the people of Europe? Is there a European identity? What does it mean to say, “I am European?” Where does Europe begin and (...) end? and Who can legitimately claim to be a part of a “European” people? The special issue seeks to contest dominant framings of the question “Who are the people of Europe?” as only a matter of government policies, electoral campaigns, or parliamentary debates. Instead, the contributions start from the assumption that answers to this question exist in data practices where people are addressed, framed, known, and governed as European. The central argument of this SI is that it is through data practices that the EU seeks to simultaneously constitute its population as a knowable, governable entity, and as a distinct form of peoplehood where common personhood is more important than differences. (shrink)

The measurement of science and technology is now fifty years old. It owes a large part of its existence to the work of the National Science Foundation and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the 1950s and 1960s. Given the centrality of S&T statistics in science studies, it is surprising that no history of the measurement exists in the literature. This article outlines such a history. The history is cast in the light of social statistics. Like social statistics, (...) S&T indicators are produced mainly by governments but differ in a number of aspects. First, they have not been developed to control individuals. Second, they have taken shape from the start at the international level. Third, they reflect a consensus among states and their organizations. This article shows that this specificity is due to the sociopolitics that drives S&T measurement. (shrink)

Building on Mary Poovey’s reflections, this article outlines a two-fold genealogy of habit in the context of the philosophy and practice of liberalism. One aspect relates to the word ‘habit’, which by the 19th century had come to mean the repetitive actions of the body and mind, thus shedding its former association with dress and collective customs. The second relates to how ‘habit’ functioned as a means of mediating the tensions of liberalism, three in particular: between the self and the (...) social; between an individual’s past, present and future actions; and between the role of the state and the role of self-government. (shrink)

A simple way to approach fallacies is to ask, "Has reasoning-strategy X retarded or halted the growth of knowledge?" and seek uncontroversial historical events as empirical support for the fallacy moniker. Historical support also offers a means of retiring reasoning strategies heretofore thought fallacious—they are wrongly accused if they helped drive knowledge. Finally, this approach allows us to be more critical of our argumentative practices. Evidence is offered for an Intuitive Fallacy: In its extreme form it rules out the possibility (...) of evidence; in its weaker form, it is a non-response to evidence that appears to be a response. (shrink)

During the late-eighteenth to late-nineteenth centuries, practices of duelling and prize fighting were criminalized in Britain, while boxing remained legal. Through a genealogical method, this paper locates discourses, primarily law, medicine, policing and science, to trace these mechanisms of criminalization and legalization. Focusing on the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and the United States, I argue that the legalization of boxing did not simply emerge as a part of a ‘civilizing process’. Rather, I explain these processes of criminalization and legalization (...) in the context of biopolitical rationalities of governance. In contrast to its contemporaries, boxing was rationalized as a scientific ‘sport’ that fitted with wider biopolitical visions of public health and well-being: allegedly it did not breed violence or threaten the public peace but was instead practised by skilled technicians. However, the biopolitical management of human life within rational and scientific form comes at a price: life’s ontological need for expression, and the drive to experience and witness boxing’s corporeal excesses remains a ghostly presence threatening to undo the sweet ‘science’. (shrink)