Citation
Hacking, Ian. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge University Press, 1990. Google Books Link
Excerpts
| Page | Quote | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 61 | Alain Desrosières, “The Part in Relation to the Whole: How to Generalize? The Prehistory of Representative Sampling”. In M. Bulmer et al. (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 1989) | Footnote pg 216 |
| 42 | C. C. Gillispie, “Probability and Politics: Laplace, Condorcet, and Turgot”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (1972) | Footnote |
| 57 | The Mathematical and Scientific Library of the Late Charles Babbage, a catalogue compiled by R. T. (London, 1872) | Footnote |
| 62 | Quetelet “discovered that Belgian lilacs burst into bloom when the sum of the squares of the mean daily temperature since the last frost adds up to (4264°C)^2” | Explanation_vs_Prediction |
| 127 | Bayesian probability “was not a question of subjective or personal degrees of opinion, but a logical relation between evidence and reasonable degrees of belief” | |
| 163 | ”One can, then, use the word ‘normal’ to say how things are, but also to say how they ought to be […] The norm may be what is usual or typical, yet our most powerful ethical constraints are also called norms.” | |
| 165 | ”quartermasters during the Napoleonic campaigns […] ordered and moved vast quantities of stores in order to feed and equip prodigious numbers of men and animals. They needed standardized units.” | |
| 192 | Salomon Neuman, Prussian health statistician: “the datum that there is one doctor per square mile throughout the state gives absolutely no indication of the real possibilities of medical assistance.” | |
| 205 | Gustav Fechner, “psychophysics”: “statistical laws […] presented a psychological reality of which we are not even conscious, but which is nonetheless part of our system of sensation and judgement.” | |
| 210 | Pierce in late 1800s: “a scientific person ‘ardently desires to have his present provisional beliefs (and all his beliefs are merely provisional) swept away, and will work hard to accomplish that object.” | Quote from 1898 |
Zotero Metadata
Abstract
In this important study Ian Hacking continues the enquiry into the origins and development of certain characteristic modes of contemporary thought undertaken in such previous works as the best-selling The 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. In the same period the idea of human nature was displaced by a model of normal people with laws of dispersion. These two parallel transformations fed into each other, so that chance made the world seem less capricious: it was legitimated because it brought order out of chaos. 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 ‘probabilisation’ of the western world.
Metadata
FirstAuthor:: Hacking, Ian
Title:: The Taming of Chance ShortTitle:: Year:: 1990
Citekey:: hacking_taming_1990
itemType:: book
Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
ISBN:: 978-1-107-65071-8