The best idea in chapter 1 is ..."a seeming paradox: the more the indeterminism, the more the control". The chapter sets up a story about how two processes proceed hand in hand: the erosion of determinism and the avalanche of printed numbers. The printed numbers are an information that is a key vector in new techniques of control. These printed numbers, this information and control, could be potent and valuable just insofar as determinism was eroded (or eroding). An interesting aspect of this story, for us, is that the social sciences pave the way here, and the natural sciences almost seem to follow the avalanche enacted by the social -- this is interesting because it runs cross to a usual story in the history of science that natural science presses forward first.
In addition, a question that arose here concerned the methodological focus on "sentences" moreo than "institutions" (Hacking notes that he regrets this, 7) which perhaps goes hand in hand with a methodological interest in "styles of reasoning" rather than something that more explicitly invokes actions alongside reasons such as "dispositifs". Perhaps this sort of methodological shift would enable a kind of inquiry that sees probability along a fifth dimension of politics (in addition to the dimensions of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and ethics named on page 4).
The best idea in chapter 2 is that the erosion of determinism did not have to lead to the taming of chance. Laplace (and even Hume) assumes a metaphysical necessity (Hume is just an epistemological skeptic about this, whereas Laplace an epistemological optimist). Bichat (p. 14) denies necessity but preserves causality (via vitalism). It was a further move to not only deny necessity but also strive to understand chance, and Charles Santiago Peirce (p. 11) is the figure or emblem for this.
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