The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life by I Bernard Cohen

The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life by I Bernard Cohen

Consulting and collecting numbers has been a feature of human affairs since antiquity-from the pyramids to tax collection to head counts for military service-but not until the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century did social numbers such as births, deaths and marriages begin to be analysed. The Triumph of Numbers explores how numbers have come to assume a leading role in science, in the operations and structure of government, in the analysis of society, in marketing and in many other aspects of daily life. The late I.B. Cohen shows how number problems of government, science and engineering led to the invention of the computer. He shines a new light on familiar figures like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Charles Dickens, and he reveals Florence Nightingale as a passionate statistician. Cohen has left us with an engaging and accessible history of numbers, and an appreciation and understanding of the essential nature of statistics.

I. Bernard Cohen (1914—2003) was Victor S. Thomas Professor, Emeritus, of the History of Science at Harvard University, where he taught from 1942 to 1984. He was the first American to receive the degree of Ph.D. in the History of Science. He was the author of many books, including Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison; The Science of Benjamin Franklin; Revolution in Science; The Newtonian Revolution; The Birth of a New Physics; and, with Anne Whitman, Isaac Newtonís Principia: A New Translation of Newtonís Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. He edited several series of works, including Harvard Monographs in the History of Science, Three Centuries of Science in America, and the ongoing Studies & Texts in the History of Computing. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Astronomical Society, the British Academy, and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780393057690
ISBN 10	0393057690
Title	The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life
Author	I Bernard Cohen
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	2005-05-31
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.