25th International Congress of History of Science, and Technology (ICHST),
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23- 29 July 2017
“Science, Technology and Medicine between the Global and the Local”
CFP: Statistics, growth and development
The proposed meeting seeks to extend previous initiatives in order to constitute an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers interested in the processes of statistics since the 17th century. A meeting held at the International Congress of Economic History at Kyoto (August 2015) was set out to compare the forms institutionalized statistics in Asia, America, and Europe. Another meeting held in Lille (France) has allowed to form a team and to agree upon the principles of this proposed meeting at the Congress of Science and Technology History in Rio de Janeiro with the aim to expand our network and to reflect together in which way statistics has contributed to economic growth since the beginning of the modern period.
This meeting’s aim is to combine national and continental experiences, to identify similarities and differences and to evaluate possible flaws of different statistic models. Another goal is to specify in which ways statistics has been put to use in order to improve production conditions and, more importantly, the public well-being.
The received presentations will have to cover a broad geographical and historical field, at the same time providing a broad enough overview in order to discuss properly the similarities and differences in statistics. The idea behind this approach is to look for constants within the relations between statistics and economic growth and development.
Several topics are suggested below, without any claim to completeness:
How has the 19th century’s probalistic revolution spread across different continents? In what manner has it modified the role of statistics during the Industrialisation? How does the factor of big data influence the relation between statistics and governance? One might also ask about the motives behind and the effects of differences between various statistic systems and tools, using concrete examples of countries and continents. These propositions address a variety of fields that are able to light up the mechanisms of economic growth. All researchers, historians or specialists within the fields of any humanity or social science, are cordially invited.
If you wish to participate with a presentation, please provide us (all three Mails listed below) with the following until 30th March 2016:
- a title,
- a short outline, at most ten lines long,
As well as your name, academic status, your institutional affiliation and a short biographical introduction. The presentations will have a time limit of 20 minutes in order to leave enough time for an afterwards discussion.