The best idea in chapter 3 is... that statistics was a chance encounter, namely that the solidification of statistical institutions was the process of a contingent intersection between 'public amateurs' and 'secret bureaucrats'. Statistical bureaux later emerged when there came to be 'public bureaucrats', professionalization of amateur knowledge who were no longer doing their thing in secret.
The best idea in chapter 4 is... "We do not here want a history of institutions" (29). But what is the difference between an institutional history and a historical epistemology (or conceptual history [not Koselleck])? "Concepts are words in their sites. Their sites are sentences and institutions" (7). The history of concepts involves the history of institutions, but the institutions are of interest as sites for the emergence of concepts. Thus, "such an institution presupposes that there is a special type of knowledge" (29).
The best idea in chapter 5 is... the contrast between a deterministic conception of social law (in Prussia) versus a probabilistic conception of social law (in France and England). One can have a deterministic or a probabilistic view of statistics (37). One is apriori and the other is empirical -- one is deductive and the other inductive. The stabilization of the latter, we suspect, is crucial to the history of how chance came to be taken quite seriously. But more on this in later chapters...
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