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Rules: A Short History of What We Live By
A panoramic history of rules in the Western world
Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don't, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change--how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don't, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines.
Rules offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us--whether we know it or not.
Rules order almost every aspect of our lives. They set our work hours, dictate how we drive and set the table, tell us whether to offer an extended hand or cheek in greeting, and organize the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we don't, yet no culture could do without them. In Rules, historian Lorraine Daston traces their development in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times. Drawing on a rich trove of examples, including legal treatises, cookbooks, military manuals, traffic regulations, and game handbooks, Daston demonstrates that while the content of rules is dazzlingly diverse, the forms that they take are surprisingly few and long-lived.
Daston uncovers three enduring kinds of rules: the algorithms that calculate and measure, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She vividly illustrates how rules can change--how supple rules stiffen, or vice versa, and how once bothersome regulations become everyday norms. Rules have been devised for almost every imaginable activity and range from meticulous regulations to the laws of nature. Daston probes beneath this variety to investigate when rules work and when they don't, and why some philosophical problems about rules are as ancient as philosophy itself while others are as modern as calculating machines.
Rules offers a wide-angle view on the history of the constraints that guide us--whether we know it or not.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published July 12, 2022
About the author
Lorraine Daston
40 books84 followersLorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951, East Lansing, Michigan)[1] is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is considered an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 31, 2024
Серйозніша книга, ніж я думала. Чомусь очікувала такого легкого нон-фіку з прикладами дивних, смішних чи навпаки влучних правил, а отримала наукову розвідку на межі історії, правознавства, філософії права і просто філософії. А, ще з математичними вкрапленнями.
Дуже сподобалося розділи про те, як правила стимулювали розвиток моди, про те, чому Амстердам в добу Просвітництва був взірцем для Парижа та Лондона, який хаос творився у тодішніх містах і як правила ще більше його поширювали. Ще цікаво було про найуспішніші правила почитати – як не дивно, але це правила правопису, а от чому краще читати.
Сподобалося, але будьте готовими до якісного контенту, а не просто розважального.
Дуже сподобалося розділи про те, як правила стимулювали розвиток моди, про те, чому Амстердам в добу Просвітництва був взірцем для Парижа та Лондона, який хаос творився у тодішніх містах і як правила ще більше його поширювали. Ще цікаво було про найуспішніші правила почитати – як не дивно, але це правила правопису, а от чому краще читати.
Сподобалося, але будьте готовими до якісного контенту, а не просто розважального.
November 18, 2023
chapters 6 and 7 were actually interesting (and kind of funnny!)
August 11, 2022
When students are introduced to the idea of an algorithm, instructors often analogize it to a cookbook recipe. Both are instances of a rule, but the algorithm differs in its exactitude and exhaustiveness: even circuits etched in silicon or gears made of brass can carry it out. If we take exactitude and exhaustiveness to be virtues of rules, then we can come to see a recipe as a defective algorithm, and an algorithm as a perfect rule.
But we could flip it around. We could equally introduce the idea of an algorithm as a recipe the assumes it will be mindlessly applied, with zero judgment. An algorithm would then be seen not as the perfection of a rule, but as a pathological case of a rule, a recipe so dumb it could be followed mechanically, incapable of handling exceptions. Recipes are then intermediate cases of rules, which introduces a puzzle: on this way of seeing things, what would be the perfect rule? It would have to be something consisting of no precepts, just a paradigm or model.
This sounds strange to contemporary ears, but Daston points out that if we look closely at the history of the English word "rule," and its cognates in other European languages, the model or paradigm was the primary sense of the word "rule" before the Enlightenment. The best illustration is the widely-misinterpreted title of the work that serves as the founding constitution of all Christian monasteries today: The Rule of Saint Benedict. That work contains instructions about meal times and such, which you might think is what the title is referring to... but wouldn't that require the plural ("rules")? It's called the "rule" (singular) because the rule (model) is the person, Saint Benedict. The ideal monk does not merely obey the instructions about meal times but embraces and and follows the model of the living standard that is the abbot, for whom Christ in turn is the model to be followed (as he was for Saint Benedict).
Once you recognize this older sense of "rule" you can see it in other phrases, but more importantly you can see the model-following as something that still competes with rules today: children model their behavior on their parents', for example. Daston: "Following the rule in this sense, understood as an inference from exemplum to example, from paradigm to particular, could not be more humdrum. The mystery is not that we do it but how we do it. This is a quintessentially modern mystery, and one that turns on the multiple senses of the word rule: how is it possible to follow a rule like the Rule of Saint Benedict without being able to analyze that ability into explicit steps like the rule for finding the square root of a given number? In other words, how can following a model be turned into executing an algorithm?"
This book covers a lot of ground, but this question seemed to me the most interesting one it addresses. Wittgenstein asked how we are able to follow rules without rules for rule-following (and so on ad infinitum). A lot of ink has been spilled on that puzzle. Daston is not so much trying to answer that question as explain why nobody was asking it until modern times.
Some other interesting items:
- the distinction between laws and regulations
- the ideal of the rule of law, and the tension with ideas of discretion, equity, clemency
- the hallowed feeling that attends rules, especially for small children but also for adults who resist even trivial language reforms
- the odd historical intersection between natural law and laws of nature
- sovereignty, miracles, and states of exception
But we could flip it around. We could equally introduce the idea of an algorithm as a recipe the assumes it will be mindlessly applied, with zero judgment. An algorithm would then be seen not as the perfection of a rule, but as a pathological case of a rule, a recipe so dumb it could be followed mechanically, incapable of handling exceptions. Recipes are then intermediate cases of rules, which introduces a puzzle: on this way of seeing things, what would be the perfect rule? It would have to be something consisting of no precepts, just a paradigm or model.
This sounds strange to contemporary ears, but Daston points out that if we look closely at the history of the English word "rule," and its cognates in other European languages, the model or paradigm was the primary sense of the word "rule" before the Enlightenment. The best illustration is the widely-misinterpreted title of the work that serves as the founding constitution of all Christian monasteries today: The Rule of Saint Benedict. That work contains instructions about meal times and such, which you might think is what the title is referring to... but wouldn't that require the plural ("rules")? It's called the "rule" (singular) because the rule (model) is the person, Saint Benedict. The ideal monk does not merely obey the instructions about meal times but embraces and and follows the model of the living standard that is the abbot, for whom Christ in turn is the model to be followed (as he was for Saint Benedict).
Once you recognize this older sense of "rule" you can see it in other phrases, but more importantly you can see the model-following as something that still competes with rules today: children model their behavior on their parents', for example. Daston: "Following the rule in this sense, understood as an inference from exemplum to example, from paradigm to particular, could not be more humdrum. The mystery is not that we do it but how we do it. This is a quintessentially modern mystery, and one that turns on the multiple senses of the word rule: how is it possible to follow a rule like the Rule of Saint Benedict without being able to analyze that ability into explicit steps like the rule for finding the square root of a given number? In other words, how can following a model be turned into executing an algorithm?"
This book covers a lot of ground, but this question seemed to me the most interesting one it addresses. Wittgenstein asked how we are able to follow rules without rules for rule-following (and so on ad infinitum). A lot of ink has been spilled on that puzzle. Daston is not so much trying to answer that question as explain why nobody was asking it until modern times.
Some other interesting items:
- the distinction between laws and regulations
- the ideal of the rule of law, and the tension with ideas of discretion, equity, clemency
- the hallowed feeling that attends rules, especially for small children but also for adults who resist even trivial language reforms
- the odd historical intersection between natural law and laws of nature
- sovereignty, miracles, and states of exception
March 6, 2024
I had mixed feelings about this work, which is in the sweet spot of non-fiction books that interest me, a combination of history, law/philosophy of law and philosophy.
I greatly appreciated her work explaining the different types of rules: laws and regulations, algorithms, models and paradigms, and the different ways rules can be structured: as thick,with exceptions and qualifications, or thin, with a simple and absolute command. Rules that are intended to be universal in concept and application or designed for a specific purposes or within a special time, location or at a particular target. And Rules that are intended to be enforced rigidly or whose application is left to the discretion of an authority, whether that discretion is rule or norm-based, in the wisdom of the authority or in his whim or caprice as a testament to his sovereignty or power.
I liked the two chapter analysis about the mechanical application of rules, particularly in the realm of basic mathematics, where factories of human calculators operating according strict instructions were ultimately replaced by electronic computers. Her analysis of how the task of calculation/computing itself was downgraded from genius to rote mechanisation, and how the higher intellectual work then shifted to organising the calculation task and the calculators, and then to designing the machines and computer programs to perform the calculations was excellent.
But I thought she failed to understand more deeply why it was that certain rules and regulations take hold (like traffic rules) while others failed, like sumptuary laws, and while others she deemed failed because they needed to continually be repromulgated. Perhaps she needed to add another field to the many covered in the book, to add psychology, sociology or anthropology, to consider what is it about human nature that leads to continuing innovation in fashion and language, that makes attempts to legislate style, words or spelling fundamentally different than to establish conventions like driving on the right side of the road (or the left in London). Or whether the continual repromulgation of regulation means not the failure of the rules or of the enterprise of rule-making but simply the inevitable and unending tug of war between order and personal advantage, between those favoring uniformity and the desire for individual expression and creativity.
In the end, this was excellent as far as it went but far from a complete statement of the role of rules in our lives.
I greatly appreciated her work explaining the different types of rules: laws and regulations, algorithms, models and paradigms, and the different ways rules can be structured: as thick,with exceptions and qualifications, or thin, with a simple and absolute command. Rules that are intended to be universal in concept and application or designed for a specific purposes or within a special time, location or at a particular target. And Rules that are intended to be enforced rigidly or whose application is left to the discretion of an authority, whether that discretion is rule or norm-based, in the wisdom of the authority or in his whim or caprice as a testament to his sovereignty or power.
I liked the two chapter analysis about the mechanical application of rules, particularly in the realm of basic mathematics, where factories of human calculators operating according strict instructions were ultimately replaced by electronic computers. Her analysis of how the task of calculation/computing itself was downgraded from genius to rote mechanisation, and how the higher intellectual work then shifted to organising the calculation task and the calculators, and then to designing the machines and computer programs to perform the calculations was excellent.
But I thought she failed to understand more deeply why it was that certain rules and regulations take hold (like traffic rules) while others failed, like sumptuary laws, and while others she deemed failed because they needed to continually be repromulgated. Perhaps she needed to add another field to the many covered in the book, to add psychology, sociology or anthropology, to consider what is it about human nature that leads to continuing innovation in fashion and language, that makes attempts to legislate style, words or spelling fundamentally different than to establish conventions like driving on the right side of the road (or the left in London). Or whether the continual repromulgation of regulation means not the failure of the rules or of the enterprise of rule-making but simply the inevitable and unending tug of war between order and personal advantage, between those favoring uniformity and the desire for individual expression and creativity.
In the end, this was excellent as far as it went but far from a complete statement of the role of rules in our lives.
June 4, 2023
I was more excited by the author than by the subject matter for this book, given that Daston generally writes thought- and debate-provoking stuff. I think Rules is no exception (pun intended?). It covers an incredibly ambitious range of material, namely the long-term history of rules in all shapes and sizes (laws, regulations, models, algorithms, etc.) across centuries of mainly European history. Granted, as an early modernist, the majority of Daston’s analysis builds upon examples drawn from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, and for that matter mainly from French, English, and German contexts. As she clarifies in her introduction, a longue-durée account like hers will necessarily skip over significant developments, both in these contexts and elsewhere. I already find it impressive that she is able to put together a coherent story using ancient Greek, high medieval, and seventeenth century thinkers. However, there were points where this “stick to what I know best” approach was a little suspicious. An admittedly brief but important discussion on the exercise of arbitrary power and slavery refers only to John Locke and the relationship of the seventeenth-century English public and their monarch, with no mention of how arbitrary power was theorised in the context of European and American abolitionism. Seems a little bit like a missed opportunity.
But I can’t fault Daston too much for not including every appropriate example in her survey. What might be more useful is to focus on what analytical tools she brings to the table to help others discuss the history and nature of rules. Perhaps the most prominent one is her distinction between “thick” and “thin” rules. Thick rules come with ‘copious advice on how to apply them’, like examples, exceptions, and models, and are often applied with “discretion”, meaning an individual or group of individuals have the power to demonstrate or decide how they are implemented and enforced. They are made with the assumption that some flexibility will be required. Thin rules, on the other hand, ‘articulate only the imperative to be executed, with no further elaboration’, like mathematical equations [56]. They are made with the assumption that the world is predictable, removing the requirement of discretion, and that they can be rigidly applied. These two kinds of rules will often work together, like when Daston writes, ‘behind every thin rule is a thick rule cleaning up after it’ [267]. Obviously, thick and thin exist on a spectrum, and some thin rules can turn thick over time and vice versa. But this already is a nice way of starting to differentiate between different kinds of rules and what standards they adhere to. Daston includes reflections on what her history tells us about the nature of rules throughout her book, but given that she’s taken a macro-level approach, these reflections remain pretty surface-level.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to anyone. Some parts feel more like an academic exercise than a useful exploration of how rules work. This might be personal preference however. If you can overlook the inevitable gaps that Daston leaves in her history, I think this is a really impressive bit of longue-durée scholarship.
But I can’t fault Daston too much for not including every appropriate example in her survey. What might be more useful is to focus on what analytical tools she brings to the table to help others discuss the history and nature of rules. Perhaps the most prominent one is her distinction between “thick” and “thin” rules. Thick rules come with ‘copious advice on how to apply them’, like examples, exceptions, and models, and are often applied with “discretion”, meaning an individual or group of individuals have the power to demonstrate or decide how they are implemented and enforced. They are made with the assumption that some flexibility will be required. Thin rules, on the other hand, ‘articulate only the imperative to be executed, with no further elaboration’, like mathematical equations [56]. They are made with the assumption that the world is predictable, removing the requirement of discretion, and that they can be rigidly applied. These two kinds of rules will often work together, like when Daston writes, ‘behind every thin rule is a thick rule cleaning up after it’ [267]. Obviously, thick and thin exist on a spectrum, and some thin rules can turn thick over time and vice versa. But this already is a nice way of starting to differentiate between different kinds of rules and what standards they adhere to. Daston includes reflections on what her history tells us about the nature of rules throughout her book, but given that she’s taken a macro-level approach, these reflections remain pretty surface-level.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to anyone. Some parts feel more like an academic exercise than a useful exploration of how rules work. This might be personal preference however. If you can overlook the inevitable gaps that Daston leaves in her history, I think this is a really impressive bit of longue-durée scholarship.
November 6, 2022
Daston argues beautifully that we've moved from a world of "thick rules" furnished with examples and exceptions, to one of "thin rules" that don't allow for discretion or flexibility. Impressive stuff.
April 25, 2023
Content was a bit all over the place and not easy to follow for an overall consistent argument. The book could have benefitted from an editor who kept the content succinct and applicable. The author seemed to cherry pick supporting arguments to demonstrate points while not at least acknowledging counter-arguments. Where I started to lose interest involved a point when real-world 'rules' regarding equity was 'demonstrated' by tracing characters' motives from a work of literary fiction.
Also, there was very little actual history of rules as a function or the reason for crafting rules from a theoretical basis. Only in the last third of the book did the author even mention the philosophers who actually helped evolve the 'why' of rules. Rather, the author seemed to assume that the reader adopted Western Judeo-Christian norms in understanding the 'why' of rules.
In other words, this book is not a systemic deconstruction of rules as a function, but rather a lot of pages to cite very specific 'areas' in society where rules exist.
Also, there was very little actual history of rules as a function or the reason for crafting rules from a theoretical basis. Only in the last third of the book did the author even mention the philosophers who actually helped evolve the 'why' of rules. Rather, the author seemed to assume that the reader adopted Western Judeo-Christian norms in understanding the 'why' of rules.
In other words, this book is not a systemic deconstruction of rules as a function, but rather a lot of pages to cite very specific 'areas' in society where rules exist.
August 6, 2022
Deeply researched. Some of the obscure stories and facts were quite interesting. Some of the parts discussing how difficult it is to change and enforce rules had obvious parallels with recent US Supreme Court decisions. The discussion of mathematics, algorithms and computer programming very much come off as a well read virgin giving a 120 page lecture on sexual intercourse.
Want to read
July 26, 2022As recommended at https://twitter.com/add_hawk/status/1...
Read
February 27, 2024A big problem with analytic philosophy is its tunnel vision. I spent years in grad school thinking about Wittgenstein's "rule following problem", which has acquired a huge secondary literature since Kripke's book on the subject in 1982. The problem is most famously posed in terms of what makes one way of following a rule, like the rule "add two", in one particular way ("2,4,6,8,...1000, 1002"), and not another ("2,4,6,8,...1000, 1004"). To summarize thousands of pages of published work on the problem: It turns out it's hard to give a fully satisfying account of what makes one way of following the rule correct and another incorrect.
One response to the rule following problem is to say that what makes one way of following the rule correct and others incorrect is that someone with the right kind of qualities judges that the one way is correct. But what are the right kind of qualities for the judge to have? If you say that the judge has to be a "good" or "reasonable" judge, and you don't have anything concrete to say about what makes someone a good or reasonable judge, then it's in danger of being an uninformative, circular account of what makes one way of following the rule correct (the correct way is the way a reasonable judge says it is—ok, what makes for a reasonable judge? well...that they judge correctly). But trying to give a concrete, informative account of what makes someone a good or reasonable judge is just as hard as saying what makes one way of following a rule correct. It's tempting to say that no special qualities of judgment are required besides something statistical, like majority rule. But almost no one finds it satisfying to say that the only reason that "add two" requires following "1000" with "1002" and not "1004" is that most people think that's the right way of following the rule. That would have the unwanted consequence that the majority is always right.
You could spend years in grad school or your life as a philosophy professor worrying about this problem (many, including me, have in fact done that). One enormously refreshing thing about Daston's book on rules is that it doesn't suffer from analytic philosophy's tunnel vision—Wittgenstein's rule following problem only occurs on a couple of pages. And when it does appear, it's presented as a worry that can only emerge when a particular way of thinking about rules becomes possible, namely that rules can be "thin", meaning that they can be applied without interpretation, without a judge. Daston shows, using example after example of actual rules, from the "Rule of Saint Benedict", which governs monks' behavior in monasteries, to Parisian traffic laws, to prescriptive rules of spelling, that rule-following is almost always analogical and model-like, and relies on the actual interpretation and application of some judge. "Thin" rules require ground-clearing and artificially imposed clarity that has to be engineered and actively maintained:
...why did it ever come to seem that explicit rules could do without implicit ones? This book's answer has been that success—slow, fitful, fragile, partial but real—in creating islands of uniformity, stability, and predictability fostered the dream of rules without exceptions, without equivocations, without elasticity...parts of the world have become rulier—easier to govern by rules because less unruly. So impressive were these partial successes that approximation was mistaken for perfection (p. 273).
There is no compelling technical solution to the rule-following problem; but its grip can be loosened by seeing that most rules presuppose application by a judge, reasonable or not.
One response to the rule following problem is to say that what makes one way of following the rule correct and others incorrect is that someone with the right kind of qualities judges that the one way is correct. But what are the right kind of qualities for the judge to have? If you say that the judge has to be a "good" or "reasonable" judge, and you don't have anything concrete to say about what makes someone a good or reasonable judge, then it's in danger of being an uninformative, circular account of what makes one way of following the rule correct (the correct way is the way a reasonable judge says it is—ok, what makes for a reasonable judge? well...that they judge correctly). But trying to give a concrete, informative account of what makes someone a good or reasonable judge is just as hard as saying what makes one way of following a rule correct. It's tempting to say that no special qualities of judgment are required besides something statistical, like majority rule. But almost no one finds it satisfying to say that the only reason that "add two" requires following "1000" with "1002" and not "1004" is that most people think that's the right way of following the rule. That would have the unwanted consequence that the majority is always right.
You could spend years in grad school or your life as a philosophy professor worrying about this problem (many, including me, have in fact done that). One enormously refreshing thing about Daston's book on rules is that it doesn't suffer from analytic philosophy's tunnel vision—Wittgenstein's rule following problem only occurs on a couple of pages. And when it does appear, it's presented as a worry that can only emerge when a particular way of thinking about rules becomes possible, namely that rules can be "thin", meaning that they can be applied without interpretation, without a judge. Daston shows, using example after example of actual rules, from the "Rule of Saint Benedict", which governs monks' behavior in monasteries, to Parisian traffic laws, to prescriptive rules of spelling, that rule-following is almost always analogical and model-like, and relies on the actual interpretation and application of some judge. "Thin" rules require ground-clearing and artificially imposed clarity that has to be engineered and actively maintained:
...why did it ever come to seem that explicit rules could do without implicit ones? This book's answer has been that success—slow, fitful, fragile, partial but real—in creating islands of uniformity, stability, and predictability fostered the dream of rules without exceptions, without equivocations, without elasticity...parts of the world have become rulier—easier to govern by rules because less unruly. So impressive were these partial successes that approximation was mistaken for perfection (p. 273).
There is no compelling technical solution to the rule-following problem; but its grip can be loosened by seeing that most rules presuppose application by a judge, reasonable or not.
March 17, 2023
This book is well researched, I think, very much in the vein of an academic product. The kind of writing that uses a tightly reasoned with a carefully referenced argument to demonstrate a series of propositions. But if she just wrote a 20 sentence synopsis of the basic conclusions that she came to, most of us would just say that sounds about right and for a lot of people the work of getting to this conclusion ultimately won’t be found to be worth it.
May 23, 2023
This is not long, but it gets a big bogged down in the historical details without having a narrative. Some very interesting ideas, but I found them at times disjointed. I still don't completely understand the difference between thick and thin rules, and how that distinction is useful. But there are useful ways of thinking about regulations, laws, norms, algorithms, and as a genealogical account of rules in society, this is very successful.
January 3, 2023
like some of the rules Daston writes about, this book is more of a thicket of examples than a expression of a particular thesis, meant to be used through analogy and comparison more than applied through deduction
September 23, 2023
A history of rules may sound dry but this is anything but. Daston weaves together philosophy, culture, science, art into an exhilarating disentangling of what rules have been and are now on our world. Her writing is erudite and intellectually stimulating.
February 21, 2022
This was an ARC.
December 19, 2022
Mesmerizing, Daston's prose is only matched by the scope of her narrative. The only book that has ever made me care about math
November 4, 2023
This is a gem of a book
Read
December 2, 2023This really changed my perspective. I suspect some misunderstandings in philosophy are caused by an unwillingness to see that rules-as-paradigms have virtues that rules-as-algorithms lack.
February 9, 2024
I love every word that this woman writes.
September 29, 2022
Some very interesting stuff there, but a little too academic for me. A very broad subject area, so lots of intriguing bits, but maybe it could have been a bit more focused.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews