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Lorraine Daston

Lorraine Daston, a director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, has written on the history of probability, wonders and scientific objectivity.

From the London Review dated 31 October 2002

Saintly Resonances

  • Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England by George Levine

‘Objectivity’ is a word at once indispensable and elusive. It can be metphysical, methodological and moral by turns, occasionally in the same paragraph. Sometimes it refers to the ultimate reality as seen from a God’s-eye point of view, sometimes to methods that replace judgments with algorithms, and sometimes to cool detachment from passions and interests. [ read more . . . ]

Selected bibliography

  • Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (2004)
  • Biographies of Scientific Objects (editor) (2000)
  • Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (1998)
  • Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (1988)

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In the LRB archive

subscriber-only content Lumpers v. Splitters · 3 November 2005

  • Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology by Katharine Anderson  Buy this book

subscriber-only content All Curls and Pearls · 23 June 2005

  • The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany by Neil Kenny  Buy this book

subscriber-only content Are you having fun today? · 23 September 2004

  • The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science by Robert Merton and Elinor Barber  Buy this book

subscriber-only content Visitors! Danger! · 8 May 2003

  • Charles Darwin: Vol. II: The Power of Place by Janet Browne

Saintly Resonances · 31 October 2002

  • Dying to Know: Scientific Epistemology and Narrative in Victorian England by George Levine

subscriber-only content Language of Power · 1 November 2001

  • The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography by J.B. Harley, edited by Paul Laxton
  • Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination by Denis Cosgrove

11 September · 4 October 2001

Not currently in the LRB archive

 not available in archive Why statistics tend not only to describe the world but to change it · 13 April 2000

  • The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning by Alain Desrosičres, translated by Camille Naish

 not available in archive How to make a Greek god smile · 10 June 1999

  • Wonder, the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences by Philip Fisher

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