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The history of measurement and the engineers of space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Andrew Barry
Andrew Barry
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths' College, London SE14 6NW.
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Extract

For the social theorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, measurement, quantification and calculation were of particular social and political significance. Karl Marx, in Capital, based his critique of classical political economy on an analysis of the quantification of labour as a commodity. Max Weber, in Economy and Society, emphasized the importance of rational calculation in the conduct of modern bureaucratic organizations. And in his major work, The Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel highlighted what he called ‘the calculating character of modern times'.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 459 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1993

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References

My thanks to an anonymous referee and to Georgina Born and Jim Secord for helpful comments made on an earlier version of this paper.

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