Headrick 2000

Headrick, Daniel R. When Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850. Oxford UP, 2000.

Enlightenment project *required* new forms of information gathering (and on history of word "information" in the period see Duguid 2015

"There have always been numerate people, for merchants and bureaucrats had been keeping accounts since ancient times. What was new in the Age of Reason and Revolution was the idea that numbers could be used to analyze something other than money, such as population, health and illness, nature, or even divine Providence"