The Roots of Biometrical Statistics

2020 ◽  
pp. 285-332
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Numerical Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Quantitative Genetics ◽  
Academic Entrepreneurship ◽  
Covariance Matrices ◽  
Regression Coefficients ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Statistical Mathematics ◽  
Method Of Correlation

This chapter traces the roots of biometrical statistics. That the modern field of mathematical statistics developed out of biometry is not wholly fortuitous. The quantitative study of biological inheritance and evolution provided an outstanding context for statistical thinking, and quantitative genetics remains the best example for an area of science whose very theory is built out of concepts of statistics—variance-covariance matrices, regression coefficients, and so on. Beyond that, the biometrician-eugenicists were possessed with an intense ecumenical urge and, especially in the case of Karl Pearson, endowed with very respectable talents for academic entrepreneurship. The great stimulus for modern statistics came from Francis Galton's invention of the method of correlation, which, significantly, he first conceived not as an abstract technique of numerical analysis, but as a statistical law of heredity. Here, as throughout the nineteenth century, the special problems of particular fields were of central importance for the development of statistical mathematics.

Social Law and Natural Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-155
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Kinetic Theory ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mean Values ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
Social Law ◽  
Statistical Mathematics ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter details how Adolphe Quetelet's work on error law provided the inspiration for the most important writers on statistical mathematics of the late nineteenth century. While Quetelet interpreted his discovery as confirmation that variation could be neglected in favor of the study of mean values, James Clerk Maxwell and Francis Galton, among others, saw in it a convenient and valuable tool for analyzing with mathematical precision the nature and effects of natural variation. The mathematics of variation was instrumental for the impressive achievements of the nineteenth-century kinetic theory. It also provided the key in biology to the quantitative study of heredity, leading eventually to what is now the most purely statistical of the natural sciences, quantitative genetics. Beyond its importance for particular natural and social sciences, however, the new understanding of the error law that derived from Quetelet's work proved essential for mathematical statistics itself.

Protecting Neutrality at Sea in a Global Age, 1815–1914

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Maartje Abbenhuis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Economic Warfare ◽  
Principles Of War

This chapter argues for the central importance of the development of the principle of neutrality in explaining the contours of the nineteenth-century age of industrial globalisation and the waging of economic warfare between 1815 and 1914. It highlights how nineteenth-century imperial expansion and industrial growth were dependent on the ability of industrial states to sustain easy access to the open seas, even in time of war. It describes how the naval powers co-ordinated and negotiated the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents in international law in such a way as to maximise the financial, industrial and imperial advantages from doing so. It also explains how the principles of war avoidance and neutrality maintenance helped to underwrite the global power of Great Britain and the contours of the Pax Britannica.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 333-337
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
Statistical Mathematics ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Structure Of Knowledge

This concluding chapter addresses how statistics has assumed the trappings of a modern academic discipline primarily during the last half century. The intellectual character of statistics had been thoroughly transformed by 1900. The period when statistical thinking was allied only to the simplest mathematics gave way to a period of statistical mathematics—which, to be sure, has not been divorced from thinking. In the twentieth century, statistics has at last assumed at least the appearance of conforming to that hierarchical structure of knowledge beloved by philosophers and sociologists in which theory governs practice and in which the “advanced” field of mathematics provides a solid foundation for the “less mature” biological and social sciences. The crystallization of a mathematical statistics out of the wealth of applications developed during the nineteenth century provides the natural culmination to this story.

Populism and Praxis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Frank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Boundary Problem ◽  
Related Question ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Political Identification ◽  
The People ◽  
American Case

This chapter argues that contemporary democratic theory’s approach to populism has been unduly influenced by Carl Schmitt’s theory of political identification. Both liberal critics and radical democratic admirers of populism have focused attention on the question of who the people are (“the boundary problem”) while neglecting the related question of how the people act (“the enactment problem”). This framework obscures the central importance of populism’s experimentation with different forms of egalitarian praxis, and how these forms come to shape political subjectivity. The formative praxis of populism is clearly indicated in the nineteenth-century American case.

scholarly journals Experiences in Common: Slavery and “Freedom” in the Process of Rio de Janeiro’s Working-Class Formation (1850–1910)

2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Badaró Mattos
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Work And Life

SummaryThe present article is based on research into the process of working-class formation in Rio de Janeiro in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. It explores the significant shared experiences of workers subjected to slavery and “free” workers in the process of working-class formation, and aims to demonstrate that the history of that process in Brazil began while slavery still existed, and that through shared work and life experience in Rio de Janeiro, as in other Brazilian cities where slavery was strong during the nineteenth century, enslaved and “free” workers shared forms of organization and struggle, founding common values and expectations that were to have a central importance in later periods of class formation.

scholarly journals Music and the Uncanny in the 19th Century

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Hentschel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Selection Criteria ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Subjective Opinion ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article explores the musical means composers in the nineteenth century used to evoke the uncanny (das Unheimliche). While most existing attempts to determine these means rely on an author’s subjective opinion with regard to particular evocations of the uncanny, this article draws exclusively on contemporary sources. Drawn from the RIPM database, thirteen examples have been selected—following Ernst Jentsch’s notion of the uncanny and based on a clearly defined set of selection criteria—from works by Weber, Loewe, Berlioz, Schumann, Wagner, Boito, and Ambroise Thomas. Compositional devices that recur in several of the works discussed prove to be of central importance. The article asks, finally, how these techniques generate the effect of the uncanny.

Centenary newspapers in Porto: Identity editorial features and the construction of audiences in a city background. Main evolutionary journalistic lines in the late nineteenth century until the First Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Lima
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
First Republic ◽  
Identification Processes ◽  
The City

O Comércio do Porto, O Primeiro de Janeiro and Jornal de Notícias were the main newspapers launched in Porto during the nineteenth century. They were founded at a time the city was of central importance for its trade and international relations, but also because it was the epicentre of the main political movements that led to great changes in the country’s governance. They evolved according to the city developments and gradually gained prestige and national reach. Ideological models of press gave way to news editorial projects, and Porto newspapers also followed that path. Each editorial profile was built from the initial matrix, but also by gradually adapting to reader preferences and enhancing identification processes within the novelty of news formats. These daily newspapers were, at some point, led by charismatic owners and directors who became key factors in their evolution. The aim of this study is to identify these specific editorial lines and how they gained the loyalty of readers, taking into consideration the role of these newspapers in building common identity.

Measuring the success of prescriptivism: quantitative grammaticography, corpus linguistics and the progressive passive

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
LIESELOTTE ANDERWALD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Change ◽  
American English ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
National Differences ◽  
The Us

This article connects the quantitative study of grammaticography with a more traditional corpus-linguistic investigation of the progressive passive. Based on a careful analysis of over 250 grammars of English published during the nineteenth century in Britain and the US, I will try to answer the question whether prescriptivism has had any influence on purported differences between British and American English in the rise of the progressive passive. This article will argue that text-type sensitivity is the overriding factor determining the occurrence of the progressive passive in the nineteenth century, rather than national differences between British and American English. Prescriptive comments during the nineteenth century did not influence developments in American English significantly. However, during the 1950s modern-style prescriptivism can be shown to have massive effects on American newspaper language. Combining quantitative historical grammaticography and corpus-linguistic studies can thus extend our insights into the factors that influence language change.

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