Über Statistik — Summary

This file is a single public lecture on statistics in general. Inama-Sternegg deliberately refuses a topical policy question and instead offers a “ground plan” of statistics: its historical impulse, administrative development, social extension, limits, and public value. His thesis is that statistics is not a narrow specialty but a general organ of modern social self-knowledge.

Ich hoffe, Sie damit doch einigermaßen zu interessieren, indem ich Ihnen zeige, daß wir es hier zu tun haben nicht mit einer besonderen Fachwissenschaft, sondern mit etwas gänzlich Allgemeinen, mit einem Bau, der so ziemlich das ganze Leben umspannt.

English translation: I hope to interest you at least to some extent by showing you that we are dealing here not with a particular specialized science, but with something entirely general, with a structure that encompasses virtually the whole of life.

The lecture first naturalizes statistics as an enduring human practice. Against the idea that statistics is merely dry bureaucracy, Inama-Sternegg presents it as an old and almost instinctive need to register collective life, visible in ancient censuses, biblical enumerations, and administrative records.

Die Statistik, meine Herren, liegt dem Menschen im Blute.

English translation: Statistics, gentlemen, is in man's blood.

Its modern form, however, arises with administration. The state gathers dispersed observations through its offices and thereby turns statistics into an instrument of oversight. Yet Inama-Sternegg is careful not to absolutize state statistics. The state sees only what passes through its organs; it cannot penetrate all social and economic relations from within.

Die Statistik ist, wie gesagt, eine staatliche Funktion geworden; es liegt in der Natur der Dinge, daß ihr Zusammenhang zuerst da klar gesehen wird, wo die Fäden der Erkenntnis in einem Knotenpunkte zusammenlaufen, und das ist doch zunächst in der staatlichen Verwaltung mit ihrem reich entwickelten Organismus, der wie ein Netz von Beobachtungsstationen über dem ganzen Gebiete ausgebreitet ist.

English translation: Statistics, as I have said, has become a function of the state; it lies in the nature of things that its coherence is first clearly perceived where the threads of knowledge converge in a nodal point, and that is above all in state administration, with its richly developed organism, which is spread out like a network of observation stations over the entire territory.

The central conceptual move is therefore from state function to social function. Statistics concerns mass phenomena, not individuals as such: the individual is significant only as an element in totals, relations, proportions, and recurring social forms. For this reason, the production of statistical knowledge must be extended beyond offices into households, businesses, associations, and the whole organized public.

Und darum gestatten Sie mir, verehrte Herren, daß ich den ganz kurzen Satz hinstelle: für die Statistik ist es nicht genug, wenn sie nur eine staatliche Funktion ist, sie muß eine gesellschaftliche Funktion werden; die ganze Gesellschaft wird schließlich aufgerufen werden müssen, um Statistik zu machen.

English translation: And so allow me, esteemed gentlemen, to state the very brief proposition: for statistics it is not enough that it be merely a function of the state; it must become a function of society; the whole of society will ultimately have to be called upon to do statistics.

This socialization of statistics rests on elementary acts: recording and calculation. Inama-Sternegg’s examples are deliberately ordinary. The housewife’s account book, the household budget, workers’ budgets, and business bookkeeping all become rudimentary statistical acts when they group particulars into comparable magnitudes. From such records arise standards of proportion, order, and social diagnosis.

Verzeichnis und Rechnung sind aber zugleich die elementaren Vorgänge der Statistik, und so dürfte es nun zunächst klar sein, was es besagen will, daß die Statistik eine gesellschaftliche Funktion sein muß.

English translation: Enumeration and reckoning, however, are at the same time the elementary operations of statistics, and thus it should now be clear at the outset what it means to say that statistics must be a social function.

The lecture’s definition condenses this view: statistics is knowledge of magnitudes within social states and processes. Its function is practical as well as scientific. Scientifically, it helps disclose causal relations; socially, it makes proportion, comparison, and orientation possible in a complex society.

Wir können sagen, die Statistik ist die Erkenntnis der Größenverhältnisse der gesellschaftlichen Zustände und Vorgänge.

English translation: We can say that statistics is the knowledge of the quantitative relations of social conditions and processes.

Inama-Sternegg also marks the limits of statistical authority. Statistics is indispensable where measurable relations are at issue, especially when reforms seek better proportionality within accepted principles. But it cannot found every political principle, nor can it measure the deepest movements of historical life.

Aber es gibt Dinge, die sich nicht messen lassen, und das sind nicht die unbedeutendsten.

English translation: But there are things that cannot be measured, and they are not the least significant ones.

Thus statistics is too small for moments of fundamental principle, such as revolutionary changes in social order; but it is irresponsible to ignore statistics where policy operates within established frameworks. The final section defends objectivity. Abuse does not arise from statistics as such, but from partial, one-sided, insufficiently connected statistics.

Es ist nur eine Gefahr für die Objektivität der Statistik, das ist die Einseitigkeit derselben.

English translation: There is only one danger to the objectivity of statistics, and that is its one-sidedness.

The relevance of the lecture lies in this double claim: modern society needs statistical knowledge, but that knowledge must be broadly produced, critically bounded, and publicly trusted. Inama-Sternegg ends by calling statistics a servant rather than a sovereign—yet a servant whose guidance modern life cannot dispense with.

Gehen wir aber nicht nach der Uhr? Warum sollen wir nicht auch einmal nach der Statistik gehen?

English translation: Do we not go by the clock? Why should we not for once also go by statistics?