The Taming of Chance

by Ian Hacking

Book Overview

In this important new study Ian Hacking continues the enquiry into the origins and development of certain characteristic modes of contemporary thought undertaken in such previous works as his best selling Emergence of Probability. Professor Hacking shows how by the late nineteenth century it became possible to think of statistical patterns as explanatory in themselves, and to regard the world as not necessarily deterministic in character. Combining...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521388848
• ISBN13: 9780521388849
• Release Date: August 1990
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Interesting Commentary

This is an extended essay by the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking on the theme of probability versus determinism. Something of a hybrid, this is not strictly a philosophical work but a historical commentary on how ideas of chance and probability developed in the 19th century. As Hacking points out at the beginning of the book, a deterministic view of the world was demolished by the emergence of quantum mechanics in the 20th century. In The Taming of Chance, Hacking covers the development of statistics as a discipline and ideas of probability to demonstrate the gradual undermining of the notion of determinism in the course of the 19th century. Hacking opens with Enlightenment ideas of causation, very much under the influence of Newtonian mechanics, and concludes with the thought of CS Peirce, whom he sees as exemplifying acceptance of essentially stochastic views of causation. Hacking presents this change in world view as driven by a number of intersecting, complex, and unexpected phenomena. A major one was the expansion of the state and systematization of government, particularly associated with Napoleonic France. This leads to the generation of large demographic and social datasets that often reveal unexpected regularities, such as the persistent uneven male to female birth ratio. These datasets not only require new methods of analysis but led to the idea of the idea of statistical 'laws.' Hacking emphasizes that the collection and analysis of this kind of data was driven in part, and in turn fed, by a desire to achieve a higher level of social control. The emergence of social statistics combines with a number of other trends, such as the idea of organ pathology in medicine, the increasingly physiological orientation in biology, and a general emphasis on quanitification in the sciences, to generate a set of new attitudes towards data and ideas of causation. In several aspects, Hacking presents a series of apparently paradoxical or perhaps ironic events, such the desire for improved social control contributing to recognition of stochastic causation, which ultimately transform ideas of causation. In many respects, this is a somewhat exploratory essay and Hacking's narrative is not laid out smoothly. This book presupposes some prior knowledge of 19th century science and philosophy. It is also dense in the sense that Hacking has compressed a great deal of analysis into a relatively short book. Nonetheless, its worth taking the effort to read it carefully because of Hacking's insightful analysis and knowledge of a broad range of 19th century intellectual history. His reconstruction of how we got from the Enlightenment to Peirce is really impressive. This book is notable also for Hacking's interesting comments on a number of other features. He has an interesting discussion, for example, of the development of the concept of normality and its consequences. His brief comment about the relationship between Peirce's pragmatism

A fascinating chapter in the 'history of the present'.

This is a fascinating book, which charts the gradual development of statistical ideas in the nineteenth century, along with associated concepts, such as normalcy, chance, and determinism. However, a few criticisms are in order. Hacking reports that there was a certain conceptual incoherence surrounding ideas relating to statistics in the 19th century, especially concerning ideas relating to determinism and chance. But I'm not quite sure that Hacking has been able to find the thread out of this confusion, as some confusions appear to remain rather resistant in spite of the narrative, which in general is admiringly clear. Three points will serve as examples: Eastern and Western: Hacking describes two broad classes of reaction to the development of statistical reasoning; 'Western' (U.K. and France) and 'Eastern' (centred on what was then Prussia) approaches. Western thought, which was largely open to statistical reasoning, is described by Hacking as 'atomistic, individualistic, and liberal'. Eastern thought on the other hand was 'holistic, collectivist, and conservative', and critical of the developing trends of statistics. Geographical and political issues aside, this characterization almost at once falls apart. For instance, slightly later in the book we are told that statistical methods were resisted in (French) medicine, as medicine was concerned with the individual case, not the average or normal, and hence statistical data was of no use. Immediately after reporting this, Hacking queries, without irony, 'how then could there be a use of statistics in human affairs? In the very institution designed to strip away the individuality of man, namely the court of law'. To add to the confusion, we later find out that Engel, the Prussian apparatchik, and hence 'Eastern' thinker, considered statistical reasoning to be part of a certain mentality he wished to avoid, that of determinism, which denies individual freedom. Likewise, the economist Wagner, Hacking reports, also adhered to this view. In fact there appears to have been a general resistance to statistical methods in the 'East' precisely because the so-called individualistic methods of the statisticians were seen as a threat to the concept of human freedom and individuality. Durkheim, the French sociologist, whom we are at one point told was 'immersed' in the Western mentality, nevertheless ascribed the functioning of statistical laws to 'collective tendencies', in fact to 'social forces', rather than to the 'underlying little independent causes' of Quetelet, the French pioneer of statistical methodology. No doubt there was some sort of difference at play here between East and West, but it strikes me that trying to distinguish these two cultures by calling one individualistic and the other collectivist does little to help. The Title of the book: 'The Taming of Chance', especially if one recalls the title of Hacking's earlier book, 'The Emergence of Probability' which dealt with the prec

not for everyone, maybe

but a mind-opener for those who are ready, an awesomely rewarding book for those who are willing to make the extra effort