Form and Fact

What happens when form and governance are thought as part of the same system? This book attributes a particular function to the graphical arrangement of numerical and statistical data. This graphical convention, which displays facts, became a means through which to collect, classify, enumerate, and disseminate knowledge in the modern world. This book examines the presence and use of graphical conventions in a diversity of forms of knowledge, such as medicine, economics, moral statistics, public heath, and poverty. By showing how disparate issues -causes of death, railway timetables, commercial fluctuations, crime and instruction, poverty, and health- are organised under the same graphical convention it will be possible to grasp the extent to which the modern subject has become an obedient user of these forms.