A thread running through the analysis of relations between statistics and their social and cognitive context is provided by the history of the different ways of seeing the role of the state in running the economy. This article offers a simplified view of five configurations that can be seen as typical: French-style social engineering is one of its modes, while classical liberalism reduces this intervention to a minimum and welcomes the freeing of market forces. The social state aims to protect workers from the consequences of the extension of mercantile logic to labor. Keynsianism makes the state responsible for the macroeconomic running of a society whose mercantile character is not challenged. Finally, neo-liberalism prefigures a state resting on macro-economic dynamics that it might be possible to direct with incentives, accepting the main hypotheses of the theory of rational anticipations. only subscribers can see the full article