The Triumph of Numbers

CONTENTS

Foreword by Peter Buck

1 A WORLD OF NUMBERS

Numbers Everywhere

Numbers in History

Numbers in the Bible: The Sin of King David

Consequences of David’s Sin

2 NEW WORLDS BASED ON NUMBERS

Kepler’s Harmonic Law

Galileo and the Laws of Motion

Numbers in the Life Sciences: Does the Blood Circulate?

A First Exercise in Demography: How Many People Can the Earth Support?

The Need for Life Tables

A New World of Numbers

Sir William Petty and Political Arithmetic

3 NUMEROLOGY AND MYSTIC PHILOSOPHY: SCIENTISTS AT PLAY WITH NUMBERS

What’s in a Name? Converting Names into Numbers

Numerology in Science

A Crusader against Numerological Superstitions

4 NUMBERS IN THE AGE OF REASON

Hutcheson’s Moral Arithmetic

Hale’s Numerical Plant and Animal Science

Thomas Jefferson: A Life Regulated by Numbers

Benjamin Franklin and Numbers

Franklin and Malthus

Franklin on Numbers and Smallpox

5 NEW USES FOR NUMBERS

Numbers and Measures

A Concern with Numbers in France: Lavoisier’s Essay on Political Arithmetic

Sir John Sinclair’s Census of Scotland

Pinel’s Medical Numbers

Louis and the Numerical Method

New Uses for Numbers: Innovations by Condorcet and Laplace

6 A DELUGE OF STATISTICS

Guerry’s Studies of Crime

7 STATISTICS REACHES MATURITY: THE AGE OF QUETELET

Numbers, Number Science, and Joyce’s Ulysses

Quetelet’s World of Numbers

The Budget of Crimes

The Reliability of Statistics

Comte versus Quetelet: Social Physics, or Sociology?

What Did Quetelet Accomplish?

8 CRITICS OF STATISTICS

Carlyle and Chartism

Dickens and Statistics

The Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything

“Death’s Ciphering Book”

Corresponding Disdain

Facts and Figures: The Message of Hard Times

9 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Sanitary Reform: The Evidence of the Numbers

A Passion for Statistics

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LITERATURE LIST

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