英国卫报:你还在相信统计数据吗?(7)（在线收听）

Since the high-point of the Enlightenment in the late 18th century, liberals and republicans have invested great hope that national measurement frameworks could produce a more rational politics, organised around demonstrable improvements in social and economic life. The great theorist of nationalism, Benedict Anderson, famously described nations as "imagined communities", but statistics offer the promise of anchoring this imagination in something tangible. Equally, they promise to reveal what historical path the nation is on: what kind of progress is occurring? How rapidly? For Enlightenment liberals, who saw nations as moving in a single historical direction, this question was crucial.

自18世纪末启蒙运动达到高潮以来，自由派和共和党都对“国家能够构建一种围绕社会和经济生活明显改善而组织的更加理性的政治”寄予厚望。伟大的民族主义理论家本尼迪克特·安德森曾有一段著名的言论，它将国家描述为“想像共同体”。不过，统计学家提出了将这种想象附着在某种现实存在的事物之上的可能性。同样，他们承诺揭示这个国家的历史道路：正在发生怎样的进步？进步速度如何？启蒙运动时期的自由主义者认为，各国都在朝着一个单一的历史方向前进，对于他们来说，这个问题至关重要。

The potential of statistics to reveal the state of the nation was seized in post-revolutionary France. The Jacobin state set about imposing a whole new framework of national measurement and national data collection. The world's first official bureau of statistics was opened in Paris in 1800. Uniformity of data collection, overseen by a centralised cadre of highly educated experts, was an integral part of the ideal of a centrally governed republic, which sought to establish a unified, egalitarian society.

在后革命时代的法国，用统计数据来揭示国家状况的潜力被攫取了，雅各宾国家着手实施一套全新的国家测量和国家数据收集框架。世界上第一个官方统计局于1800年在巴黎成立。数据收集的一致性由受过高等教育的专家组成的中央干部监督，是中央统治的共和国理想的一个组成部分，寻求建立一个统一、平等的社会。

From the Enlightenment onwards, statistics played an increasingly important role in the public sphere, informing debate in the media, providing social movements with evidence they could use. Over time, the production and analysis of such data became less dominated by the state. Academic social scientists began to analyse data for their own purposes, often entirely unconnected to government policy goals. By the late 19th, reformers such as Charles Booth in London and WEB Du Bois in Philadelphia were conducting their own surveys to understand urban poverty.

从启蒙运动开始，统计数据在公共领域扮演着越来越重要的角色：为媒体上的辩论提供信息，为社会运动提供他们可以使用的证据。随着时间的推移，这类数据的制作和分析不再由国家主导。学术社会科学家开始为自己的目的分析数据，通常与政府的政策目标毫无瓜葛。到了19世纪末，为了了解城市的贫困状况，伦敦的查尔斯·布斯和费城的韦布·杜·波依斯等改革者开始自己进行调查。