ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Computing without Computers? The Rise and Fall of 'Graphique', a Graphic Information Processing Method for the Human and Social Sciences. (France, 1947—1990)

• In Event: Data Visualization and the History of Statistics 1

English Abstract

The history of the Human and Social Sciences (HSS) in the 20th century is marked by a growing use of large volumes of data. To respond this challenge, multivariate statistical methods, soon applied through mechanized technologies, came to be seen as the most effective solution. Yet, I argue in the present article that the reasons behind this choice were far from self-evident for researchers right after WW2, and that precise studies on how they came to be are still lacking in the current historiography. Understanding how computer-assisted statistics took over requires not only to investigate how researchers processed data without computers nor statistics, but also to examine the material and technical difficulties they faced when confronted with statistical technicality and early computing technologies. The present article addresses this lacuna by examining how researchers dealt with a rather common problem in the field: how to reduce the n dimensions of a huge table to convenient visualizations on paper or screen.

From the perspective of post-war France, I analyze how Graphique, a visually-driven and analog method for data processing developed by the cartographer and semiotician Jacques Bertin (1918-2010), was slowly relegated because of the rise of computer-assisted multivariate data analysis. This research reveals how divergent approaches to the formalization of human sciences coexisted from the 1950s onwards, and how computational methods that originated from statistics took over in this context. Drawing upon the constant comparison Bertin and his team made between Graphique and statistical procedures that originated from the uses of computers, such as factor analysis and automatic clustering, I analyze the epistemic, material and institutional reasons that led actors to consider computer visualizations as the inescapable path towards the ‘rationalization’ of the HSS’ methods in this context.

Author

• Edgar Lejeune