CORE SEMINAR IN LEGAL THEORY: Lorraine DASTON, "The History of Rules" (VUB: 4 C.05, 19 NOV 2025, 12:00-13:30) [HYBRID]

   

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Abstract:

Rules shape nearly every aspect of our lives—from how we work and drive to how we greet each other and mark life’s milestones. We may resent some and crave others, but no culture can exist without them. To understand why rules matter, one must trace their history beyond their purely juridical ecology of production: from legal codes and cookbooks to military manuals and traffic regulations. Surprisingly, across centuries and contexts, their forms remain remarkably few. During this seminar, Lorraine Daston will explore the three enduring forms of rules—the algorithms that calculate, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She will show how rules evolve, how they stiffen or soften, and how once-irritating regulations become daily habits. Far from being mere constraints, rules are also resources—tools that reveal as much about human imagination as they do about order.

On the author:

Lorraine Daston is one of the most acclaimed historians of our time. Her work, translated worldwide, has earned her the Pfizer Award, the Sarton Medal, the Dan David Prize, and the Balzan Prize. Former director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. Her book Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton UP, 2022) was named Book of the Year by the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Seminary Co-Op, and received the PROSE Award in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology.

 Contact Laurent dot Desutter at vub dot be.