Sociology and Statistics in Britain, 1833–1979

Plamena Panayotova is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Edinburgh. She is currently studying the popularisation of science in Britain since the eighteenth century and teaching quantitative methods and statistical literacy. She has published several studies on the history of sociology and statistics in Britain and edited a collection of essays on the history of sociology. Her broader research interests include the history of science in general and the history of statistics and quantification, in particular, as well as the history of education and learning.

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Traditional Viewpoint - Philip Abrams' The Origins of British Sociology (1968).- Chapter 3. A New Perspective - the Evolution of Statistics, 1660-1935.- Chapter 4. The Idea of Science in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain.- Chapter 5. The Statistical Work of Section F of the BAAS: Between the Hammer of Politics and the Anvil of Science.- Chapter 6. The Legacy of the Statistical Society of London - Aliis Exterendum and Beyond.- Chapter 7. Non-quantitative Models - Comte and Durkheim.- Chapter 8. Sociology and Statistics in the Sociological Society.- Chapter 9. Academic Sociology and Statistics in the Wake of the Sociological Society.- Chapter 10. The Intellectual Landscape in British Sociology, ca. 1930s-1970s.- Chapter 11. The Post-war Expansion of the British Education System and its Impact on Sociology.- Chapter 12. The Changing Face of an Expanding Sociology.- Chapter 13. The Teaching of Sociology to Undergraduate Students in Britain, 1904-1979.- Chapter 14. Positivism and Statistics in British Sociology.- Chapter 15. Hard Times.