The Taming of Chance

Cambridge University Press: New York, N.Y., 1998. Later printing. Trade paperback. Good. 264 pages. This is one of the Ideas in Context series. Pencil underlining and notations. Cover worn. Corners creased. Includes Acknowledgments, Notes, and Index. Topics covered include The Argument; The Doctrine of Necessity; Public Amateurs, Secret Bureaucrats; Bureaux; The Sweet Despotism of Reason; The Quantum of Sickness; The Granary of Science; Suicide is a Kind of Madness; The Experimental Basis of the philosophy of legislation; Facts without authenticity, without detail, without control, and without value; By what majority?; The law of large numbers; Regimental chests; Society prepares the crimes; The astronomical conception of society; The astronomical conception of society; The mineralogical conception of society; The most ancient nobility; Cassirer's thesis; The Normal State; As Real as Cosmic Forces; The Autonomy of Statistical Law; A Chapter from Prussian Statistics; and A Universe of Chance. Combining detailed scientific historical research with characteristic philosophic breadth and verve, The Taming of Chance brings out the relations between philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics, and the development of social institutions, and provides a unique and authoritative analysis of the "probabilization" of the western world. Ian MacDougall Hacking CC FRSC FBA (born February 18, 1936) is a Canadian philosopher specializing in science. He has won numerous awards, such as the Killam Prize for the Humanities and the Balzan Prize, and been a member of prestigious groups, including the Order of Canada, the Royal Society of Canada and the British Academy. The Taming of Chance is a 1990 book about the history of probability by the philosopher Ian Hacking. First published by Cambridge University Press, it is a sequel to Hacking's The Emergence of Probability (1975). Hacking discusses the history of probability. He draws on the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault. The Taming of Chance was first published in the United Kingdom by Cambridge University Press in 1990. It is part of the series Ideas in Context. The Taming of Chance has been described as ground-breaking. The book received positive reviews from the statistician Dennis Lindley in Nature, the philosopher Stephen P. Turner in the American Journal of Sociology, the historian of science Theodore M. Porter in American Scientist and in Poetics Today, and Timothy L. Alborn in Isis. The book received mixed reviews from the philosopher Margaret Schabas in Science and Bruce Kuklick in American Historical Review. Lindley credited Hacking with presenting a careful and entertaining discussion of the development of the idea of chance, successfully showing that the laws of chance developed from "collections of data." He noted that, "Hacking's argument is supported by a vast number of references to statistical work and the interpretations put upon it." However, he criticized Hacking's style for being sometimes "overwhelming in its complexity", and questioned whether Hacking's thesis was original. Turner wrote that the book was useful for both sociologists of science and historians of social science, and that while Hacking's arguments were open to objections, Hacking was "too sophisticated" to be caught by them. Porter wrote in American Scientist that Hacking made "outstanding use" of Foucault's insights. He believed that Hacking's perspective was "especially fitting as an approach to the history of probability and statistics." Although he was not entirely satisfied with Hacking's arguments, he concluded that the book was "eminently worth reading." In Poetics Today, Porter described the book as "exceptionally illuminating on the issue of statistics and control" and credited Hacking with suggesting a "suitably subtle way of understanding social statistics." Alborn wrote that Hacking had a "vibrant writing style" and presented a "wealth of material". However, he also wrote that the book left many questions unanswered. Schabas complimented Hacking for his discussion of "the debate over free will and determinism." However, she wrote that because the book built on previous works by Hacking such as The Emergence of Probability, it "does not exhilarate quite as much." She disputed the novelty of parts of Hacking's argument, noting that Porter had dealt with much of the same subject matter in The Rise of Statistical Thinking (1986). Kuklick noted that the book was a sequel to Hacking's earlier work The Emergence of Probability. Kuklick praised Hacking for the "richness of his ideas" and credited him with mastering complicated literature in several languages and "meticulous scholarship" superior to that of Foucault. However, he considered the book a "strain to understand" and criticized Hacking for giving insufficient emphasis to the role of the hospital in "acclimating the public to chance and probability", and for his "penchant for irrelevant anecdotes" and poor judgment about how to write about the past.