I was wondering why I just couldn’t get far in Theodore Porter’s Trust in Numbers (1995) until I came across the following (on p. 15):
Lorraine Daston instances Charles Dufay, a French researcher of the 1720s and 1730s, to epitomize a different experimental ideal.
So it’s not my lagging attention due to a virus. It’s just subtly awful writing. Porter’s book is looming large in the revisions of Accountability Frankenstein, but his frequently elliptical (dis)organization and style make the reading painful.