Rules: A Short History of What We Live By

A talk by Lorraine Daston

October 19, Sala degli Stemmi and online, Villa Salviati

In this talk, Professor Lorraine Daston presented her newest book, ‘Rules: A Short History of What We Live By’ (Princeton, 2022). This session was part of the Histories of Knowledge seminar, organised by Prof. Lauren Kassell and Prof. Nicolas Guilhot. It was also an opportunity for other EUI members to listen and ask questions to the most prominent historian of science of our time. 

Book abstract

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 organise the rites of life, from birth through death. We may chafe under the rules we have, and yearn for ones we do not, 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 do not, 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: A Short History of What We Live By (The Lawrence Stone Lectures,  13): Daston, Lorraine: 9780691156989: Amazon.com: Books

About the author: Professor Lorraine Daston is Director Emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, and a permanent fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
chiara lacroix (October 26, 2023). Rules: A Short History of What We Live By. EUI | History of Science and Medicine. Retrieved April 29, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ol3p


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