Hacking, 'Taming', chs. 6-8

The best idea in chapter 6 is... that of a methodological focus on practical problems: "This was not an abstract, intellectual event, but, as always in the taming of chance, a practical attack on an immediate and material problem" (p. 48).

The best idea in chapter 7 is... that sometimes we travel 'the road from scientific law to scientific measurement' (Kuhn) in the opposite direction, moving from numbers to law, which is heroized less by the grand theoretical scientist and more by the armies of counting bureaucrats (see p. 62).  The numbers give us a wealth of data for making "more inductions".  The 19th century search for constants in the numerical data, and found there 'laws' (which today we might call 'regularities' looking forward to p. 128).  The search for constants is epitomized in Babbage (cf. 58-9).  The years in which this searching stabilized was 1820 to 1840.  This was (for us) a platform leveraging the previously stabilized platform of bureaux of enumeration which had stabilized a little earlier, 1800s and 1810s.

The best idea in chapter 8 is... that, for Esquirol, "Madess... was English."  This is part of an account of how the very first self-consciously statistical laws were conceived in explanatory terms (p. 71); this was (as later chapters argue) not an easy combination.

Hacking, 'Taming', chs. 3-5

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...

Hacking, 'Taming' chs. 1 & 2

This term we are playing the game of "the best idea in this chapter is..."

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.

Hacking, 'The Taming of Chance'

Spring 2013 reading schedule

Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance

All meetings are Thursdays 2p-4p.

Week 1 - chs. 1 & 2

Wk 2 - chs. 3-5

Wk 3 - chs. 6-8
Wk 4 - no meeting (Thur Apr 25)

Wk 5 - chs. 9-10

Wk 6 - chs. 11-13

Wk 7 - chs. 14-16

Wk 8 - no meeting (Thur May 23)

Wk 9 - chs. 17-19

Wk 10 - ch. 20-22

Wk 11 - ch. 23 + drinks?