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.