How Well Do Facts Travel?

Peter Howlett is an expert on the economic history of the First and Second World Wars and contributed the text for the official history: Fighting with Figures. Dr Howlett's publications also explore international economic growth and convergence since 1870 and the development of internal labor markets and have appeared in edited volumes and journals such as the Economic History Review, Explorations in Economic History and Business History. He teaches at the London School of Economics and is Secretary of the Economic History Society. Mary S. Morgan is Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics and the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely on topics ranging from statistics to experiments to narrative, and from social Darwinism in late-nineteenth-century America to game theory in the Cold War. Her major works include The History of Econometric Ideas (Cambridge, 1990), The Foundations of Econometric Analysis (Cambridge, 1995, co-edited with David F. Hendry), and Models as Mediators (Cambridge, 1999, co-edited with Margaret Morrison). Professor Morgan's account of scientific modeling is forthcoming in The World in the Model. She is currently engaged in the research project 'Re-Thinking Case Studies Across the Social Sciences' as a British Academy-Wolfson Research Professor.

'This fascinating interdisciplinary collection arising from an extraordinary international collaboration is a significant and innovative contribution to a crucial question in science and technology studies: what do we mean by a 'fact'? New light is thrown on this old question by a fresh focus on the transmission and transformation of facts between different contexts, with very welcome attention to neglected subject areas, too. It is an intellectual feast of a volume, with plenty of food for thought for historians, philosophers, and natural and social scientists, especially those who are uncomfortable sitting in conventional disciplinary pigeonholes.' Hasok Chang, University of Cambridge

• 1. Travelling facts Mary S. Morgan; Part I. Matters of Fact: 2. Facts and building artefacts: what travels in material objects? Simona Valeriani; 3. A journey through times and cultures? Ancient Greek forms in American nineteenth-century architecture: an archaeological view Lambert Schneider; 4. Manning's N: putting roughness to work Sarah J. Whatmore and Catharina Landström; 5. My facts are better than your facts: spreading good news about global warming Naomi Oreskes; 6. Real problems with fictional cases Jon Adams; Part II. Integrity and Fruitfulness: 7. Ethology's travelling facts Richard Burkhardt; 8. Travelling facts about crowded rats: rodent experimentation and the human sciences Ed Ramsden; 9. Using cases to establish novel diagnoses: creating generic facts by making particular facts travel together Rachel Ankeny; 10. Technology transfer and travelling facts: a perspective from Indian agriculture Peter Howlett and Aashish Velkar; 11. Archaeological facts in transit: the eminent mounds of central North America Alison Wylie; Part III. Companionship and Character: 12. Packaging small facts for re-use: databases in model organism biology Sabina Leonelli; 13. Designed for travel: communicating facts through images Martina Merz; 14. Using models to keep us healthy: the productive journeys of facts across public health research networks Erika Mansnerus; 15. The facts of life and death: a case of exceptional longevity David Haycock; 16. Love life of a fact Heather Schell.