Symptoms, Imagination, and Statistical Hypostatisation

The paper is an attempt to think about the relation between imagination and processes of hypostatisation (the taking of something abstract as ontologically real). I use a historical case study from the history of economic statistics to try tease out some of the aspects of that imagination/hypostatisation connection, but as the abrupt conclusion indicates, there is some additional work to be done there. Something that I am considering, moving forward, is whether it is possible to extract some of the mechanisms mentioned in the final part of the paper (‘Statistical symptoms’) from this particular economic case and consider whether they could be applicable in other cases of hypostatised objects. There are some famous historical thematic precedents here (Anderson’s Imagined communities to name a timely example), but maybe there is some terra incognito left to explore.