Theodore M Porter
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Theodore M. Porter is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His books include The Rise of Statistical Thinking and Genetics in the Madhouse (both Princeton).
A foundational work on historical and social studies of quantification
What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust...
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Theodore Porter is Professor of History at UCLA and author of The Rise of Statistical Thinking and Trust in Numbers (both Princeton)
Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry. His faith in science grew out of a deeply moral quest, reflected also in his socialism and his efforts to find a new basis for relations...
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Theodore M. Porter is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His many books include Trust in Numbers, Karl Pearson, and Genetics in the Madhouse (all Princeton).
An essential work on the origins of statistics
The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 explores the history of statistics from the field's origins in the nineteenth century through to the factors that produced the burst of modern statistical...
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In the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books. Almost from the beginning, they pointed to heredity as the most important of these causes. As doctors and state officials steadily lost faith in the capacity of asylum care to stem the terrible increase of insanity, they began emphasizing the need to curb the reproduction of the insane. They...
