TWELVE The Laboratory of Theory or What's Exact about the Exact Sciences

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS v
3. PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
4. THE VALUES OF PRECISION
5. INTRODUCTION 3
6. PART ONE: ENLIGHTENMENT ORIGINS
7. ONE Quantification, Precision, and Accuracy: Determinations of Population in the Ancien Regime 17
8. TWO A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France 39
9. THREE "The Nicety of Experiment": Precision of Measurement and Precision of Reasoning in Late Eighteenth-Century Chemistry 72
10. FOUR Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part I—Traveling 92
11. PART TWO: INDUSTRIAL CULTURES
12. FIVE The Meaning of Precision: The Exact Sensibility in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany 103
13. SIX Accurate Measurement Is an English Science 135
14. SEVEN Precision and Trust: Early Victorian Insurance and the Politics of Calculation 173
15. EIGHT The Images of Precision: Helmholtz and the Graphical Method in Physiology 198
16. NINE Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part II—The Age of Steam and Telegraphy 222
17. PART THREE: MASS DISTRIBUTION
18. TEN The Morals of Energy Metering: Constructing and Deconstructing the Precision of the Victorian Electrical Engineer's Ammeter and Voltmeter 239
19. ELEVEN Precision Implemented: Henry Rowland, the Concave Diffraction Grating, and the Analysis of Light 283
20. TWELVE The Laboratory of Theory or What's Exact about the Exact Sciences 311
21. THIRTEEN Precision: Agent of Unity and Product of Agreement Part III—"Today Precision Must be Commonplace" 352
22. INDEX 363
23. CONTRIBUTORS 371