Statistics are not reality, but they are a map to reality, and that map is central to the basic knowledge needed for modern government. Or at least so argues Michel Foucault in Security, Territory, and Population: Lectures at the College du France, 1977-1978 (edited by Michel Senellart, translated by Graham Burchell, originally published 2004, translation into English published in 2007). For example, he argues: “[T]his knowledge of things that comprise the very reality of the state is precisely what at the time was called `statistics.’ Etymologically, statistics is knowledge of the state, of the forces and resources that characterize the state at a given moment.”

Here’s a passage from Foucault’s lecture of March 15, 1978. Hat tip: I was introduced to this essay by a LinkedIn post from Noah Williams at the University of Miami. My previous readings of Foucault did not take me this deep into his writings!)

[A]t the level of content, what must be known in order to be able to govern? I think we see an important phenomenon here, an essential transformation. In the images, the representation, and the art of government as it was defined up to the start of the seventeenth century, the sovereign essentially had to be wise and prudent. What did it mean to be wise? Being wise meant knowing the laws: knowing the positive laws of the country, the natural laws imposed on all men, and, of course, the commandments of God himself. Being wise meant knowing the historical examples, the models of virtue, and making them rules of behavior. On the other hand, the sovereign had to be prudent, that is to say, to know in what measure, when, and in what circumstances it was actually necessary to apply this wisdom. When, for example, should the laws of justice be rigorously applied, and when, rather, should the principles of equity prevail over the formal rules of justice? Wisdom and prudence, that is to say, in the end an ability to handle laws.

At the start of the seventeenth century I think we see the appearance of a completely different description of the knowledge required by someone who governs. What the sovereign or someone who governs, the sovereign inasmuch as he governs, must know is not just the laws, and it is not even primarily or fundamentally the laws (although one always refers to them, of course, and it is necessary to know them). What I think is new, crucial, and determinant is that the sovereign must know those elements that constitute the state … That is to say, someone who governs must know the elements that enable the state to be preserved in its strength, or in the necessary development of its strength, so that it is not dominated by others or loses its existence by losing its strength or relative strength. That is to say, the sovereign’s necessary knowledge (savoir) will be a knowledge (connaissance) of things rather than knowledge of the law, and this knowledge of things that comprise the very reality of the state is precisely what at the time was called “statistics.” Etymologically, statistics is knowledge of the state, of the forces and resources that characterize the state at a given moment. For example, knowledge of the population, the measure of its quantity, mortality, natality; reckoning of the different categories of individuals in a state and of their wealth; assessment of the potential wealth available to the state, mines and forests, etcetera; assessment of the wealth in circulation, of the balance of trade, and measure of the effects of taxes and duties, all this data, and more besides, now constitute the essential content of the sovereign’s knowledge. So, it is no longer the corpus of laws or skill in applying them when necessary, but a set of technical knowledge that describes the reality of the state itself.

 

Walter Walter O’Leary, a Managing Partner at South Pointe Capital, and a colleague of Noah Williams at the University of Miami, pointed out the origins of the terminology of “statistics from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1770, “science dealing with data about the condition of a state or community” [Barnhart], from German Statistik, popularized and perhaps coined by German political scientist Gottfried Achenwall (1719-1772) in his “Vorbereitung zur Staatswissenschaft” (1748), from Modern Latin statisticum (collegium) “(lecture course on) state affairs,” from Italian statista “one skilled in statecraft,” from Latin status “a station, position, place; order, arrangement, condition,” figuratively “public order, community organization,” noun of action from past-participle stem of stare “to stand” (from PIE root *sta- “to stand, make or be firm”).

OED points out that “the context shows that [Achenwall] did not regard the term as novel,” but current use of it seems to trace to him. Sir John Sinclair is credited with introducing it in English use.

The broader meaning “numerical data of any sort collected and classified systematically” is from 1829; hence the study of any subject by means of extensive enumeration. Abbreviated form stats is recorded by 1961.

This early notion of statistics as statecraft is (of course) appealing to me. Indeed, it helped me to crystallize one form of my discontent with how modern politics is often practiced. I would probably be uncomfortable with a government should be run by economists and other technocrats. But I would like to feel that a larger share of politicians have more than a passing and outdated acquaintance with the statistics that provide a map of “the forces and resources that characterize the state in a given moment.”

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