CONCEPT
Genealogy of Data
Daston's historical reconstruction of the concept of 'data' — revealing that what we now treat as things found in the world was originally things given as starting points for argument, and that the transformation required the construction of elaborate institutional systems.
The word 'data' comes from the Latin dare, meaning 'to give.' In its original seventeenth-century usage, data referred not to things found but to things given — the premises of an argument, the starting points that were granted rather than discovered. A mathematician might stipulate: given these axioms, derive these conclusions. Given functioned as a verb of bestowal, not of observation. The transformation of data from philosophical premises into empirical observations — from things given to things found — occurred over centuries and required the construction of elaborate systems of collection, classification, and standardization. Daston's genealogical work shows that the contemporary concept of data as raw material gathered from the world is the endpoint of this historical process, not its starting point, and that it carries the institutional assumptions of the systems that produced it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The genealogy matters because it reveals something systematically