Considering Data: Critique and Method

Are statistics extracted from old printed compendia, manual compilations of even older figures, and data coded to feed today’s electronic calculations all of the same nature? The most recent state of digital technology suggests that they are. But this is a retrospective illusion. It is easily dispelled if we seriously consider the production, use, and circulation of these three types of corpus. The distinction immediately leads to the question of the method for studying them. By focusing on the historical periods that are specific to them – the seventeenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries – and on the apprenticeships that have given them meaning, we have the means to grasp the know-how and presuppositions that have been characteristic of each of these genres, and to identify how some of these presuppositions have endured to the present day.