1 00:00:00,270 --> 00:00:10,920 Thank you all for coming. It's a great pleasure to deliver this lecture, especially because it bears the name of best German. 2 00:00:10,920 --> 00:00:16,080 I think Voltaire drank 18 cups of strong coffee. 3 00:00:16,080 --> 00:00:19,350 Perhaps this would if I were to adopt this strategy, 4 00:00:19,350 --> 00:00:26,400 I might finish this everlasting book on the history of rules about which you are to hear a fragment. 5 00:00:26,400 --> 00:00:38,040 So we're going to be interested in arguing this evening is to present on the basis of an episode in the history of of rules, a certain kind of mania. 6 00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:41,280 In fact, I'm going to contrast two episodes of Romania. 7 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:51,120 I'm interested, of course, in the content of these rules, but I'm even more interested in the kind of rule the form of rule. 8 00:00:51,120 --> 00:01:00,570 And I'm going to argue that at least in certain realms in the late 17th and in the 18th century, 9 00:01:00,570 --> 00:01:05,880 what a rule could be underwent a significant mutation. 10 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:14,070 But let me start off with some examples. Paris Police Ordinance February 20th, 11 00:01:14,070 --> 00:01:29,220 1737 Women caught wearing dresses made of cotton and gin in defiance of previous bans of this material will be fined 300 leaflet. 12 00:01:29,220 --> 00:01:39,990 Paris Police Ordinance November 28th, 1750 In defiance of the edicts of 16, 63, 16, 13 00:01:39,990 --> 00:01:47,400 66 and 17 44, Parisians are still not getting up at seven a.m. to sweep their stoops. 14 00:01:47,400 --> 00:01:55,890 They are still emptying the contents of their chamber pots from the window and they are still blocking the streets with manure 15 00:01:55,890 --> 00:02:05,730 and bricks and generally not at all conforming to the edicts ordinance and prohibitions repeatedly issued by the authorities. 16 00:02:05,730 --> 00:02:27,750 Paris Police Ordinance September 3rd, 1754 In defiance of the edicts of 16 67 16, 72, 7500, 17, three, 17, five, 17, 22, 1724, 17, 32, 1746 and 1748. 17 00:02:27,750 --> 00:02:37,020 Parisians are still playing ball games in the street and endangering passers by and breaking street lanterns. 18 00:02:37,020 --> 00:02:46,260 The culprits who are shop boys, artisans and liveried servants are hereby enjoined to cease and desist or pay a fine of 200 leave. 19 00:02:46,260 --> 00:02:57,450 But these rules are typical of the thousands of police regulations issued between 16 67 when the 20 00:02:57,450 --> 00:03:05,370 Office of the Lieutenant de Police was created and its abolition during the French Revolution. 21 00:03:05,370 --> 00:03:10,080 The office was created in the words of the royal decree of sixteen sixty seven. 22 00:03:10,080 --> 00:03:21,030 I'm quoting now to assure the peace of mind of the public and individuals to purge the city of all that could cause disorder, 23 00:03:21,030 --> 00:03:29,760 to procure abundance and to make each live, according to his condition and his station. 24 00:03:29,760 --> 00:03:38,220 Catching and punishing criminals actually rank rather low on this list instead. 25 00:03:38,220 --> 00:03:49,110 Far more important was to regulate almost every detail of what we might now call urban life, 26 00:03:49,110 --> 00:03:53,880 from firefighting to street cleaning to traffic and clothing. 27 00:03:53,880 --> 00:04:01,890 No unruliness was in principle too small to escape the notice of the Parisian police. 28 00:04:01,890 --> 00:04:09,720 Fishmongers who blocked the husar poor rowdies, who hissed during performances of the comedy, 29 00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:17,910 says fashionistas who were wearing band gold and silver buttons and embroidery of any kind. 30 00:04:17,910 --> 00:04:28,470 Carriage drivers who were swearing at pedestrians unprecedented in their number, their scope of their mind numbing detail. 31 00:04:28,470 --> 00:04:35,130 These rules aimed to micromanage every aspect of Parisian life. 32 00:04:35,130 --> 00:04:40,530 Everyone and everything, at least within city limits, 33 00:04:40,530 --> 00:04:50,790 to turn famously unruly Paris into a place in which Parisians obeyed all the rules all of the time. 34 00:04:50,790 --> 00:05:00,300 Never before had the vision of what rules could accomplish been so, all encompassing and so all. 35 00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:10,740 So unbending, excuse me. This was in ludicrous contrast to the lived reality of life in the city. 36 00:05:10,740 --> 00:05:22,800 If there was one thing that Parisians and visitors agreed upon during most of the 18th century, it was that Enlightenment Paris was a squalid, 37 00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:36,210 stinking, teeming chaos where then, as no one took one's life in one's hands to cross the street. 38 00:05:36,210 --> 00:05:43,500 A German visitor complaint is just one of many such reports of quote the incessant din of carriages, 39 00:05:43,500 --> 00:05:52,560 HIAC and street vendors, the dirty streets, the horrid, multifarious steam and the unhealthy stench. 40 00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:57,630 Describing Paris a decade or so later in his tabloid apathy. 41 00:05:57,630 --> 00:06:09,690 The Paris native Louis Sebastian, M.C., described harrowing scenes of panicked pedestrians fleeing carriages driven at breakneck speeds. 42 00:06:09,690 --> 00:06:14,370 As you can see here, the royal carriage making its way through a throng. 43 00:06:14,370 --> 00:06:25,350 M.C. wrote a utopian novel as well as Paris in the year 24 40, and he imagines the Paris of the future as a place where, 44 00:06:25,350 --> 00:06:30,000 to the astonishment of the time traveller, Parisians are polite. 45 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:39,570 They're hard working. They have abandoned high fashion for plain, sturdy clothing and where the streets are broad, 46 00:06:39,570 --> 00:06:47,430 well lit and safe for pedestrians, including the king who has abandoned his royal carriage. 47 00:06:47,430 --> 00:06:55,290 It's worthy of note that he thought it would take Paris at least 750 years to achieve this. 48 00:06:55,290 --> 00:07:07,620 The prolific, prolix and relentlessly issued rules of Lieutenant of Police seemed wildly inadequate to the task of taming Enlightenment Paris. 49 00:07:07,620 --> 00:07:10,440 Yet the rules kept coming. 50 00:07:10,440 --> 00:07:20,640 Thousands of them each more unyielding than the last in its expectation of being obeyed to the letter backed up by fines or worse. 51 00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:27,780 Here we see prostitutes being carted off to the side that will only the door 52 00:07:27,780 --> 00:07:34,500 recite all of the long list of previously and obviously in efficacious ADX, 53 00:07:34,500 --> 00:07:44,100 and the exasperated tone of the preambles betray any sign that all had not gone exactly to plan. 54 00:07:44,100 --> 00:07:52,110 It is this obduracy and rigidity of rule making in the face of abject rule failure. 55 00:07:52,110 --> 00:07:55,140 That is the topic of my lecture this evening. 56 00:07:55,140 --> 00:08:04,470 As I said at the outset, I'm more interested in the kind of rule that Parisian ordinances exemplified than in the content of the particular rules, 57 00:08:04,470 --> 00:08:15,180 although I'll be giving lots of examples. I'm going to argue that the Roumania of Enlightenment Paris represents the advent of a new kind of 58 00:08:15,180 --> 00:08:24,840 rule that contrasted starkly with the equally profuse and detailed rules of the early modern period. 59 00:08:24,840 --> 00:08:34,230 The latter were almost always framed with an eye toward the adjustments that would be necessary in practise. 60 00:08:34,230 --> 00:08:39,660 It's very rare to encounter a freestanding or naked rule. 61 00:08:39,660 --> 00:08:48,870 The formulation of the rule itself almost always includes examples and often exceptions, 62 00:08:48,870 --> 00:09:00,780 and an exhortation that some amount of judgement and discretion will be necessary to apply this rule to particular circumstances. 63 00:09:00,780 --> 00:09:09,570 These earlier rules were as simple as those of the later Parisian ordinances were rigid. 64 00:09:09,570 --> 00:09:21,840 My question is what made the Parisian authorities so confident that their rules could be formulated as if particulars always conformed to universals? 65 00:09:21,840 --> 00:09:29,700 As if Parisians always did what they were told in the teeth of abundant evidence to the contrary, 66 00:09:29,700 --> 00:09:34,170 in order to highlight the novelty of these rigid rules. 67 00:09:34,170 --> 00:09:49,080 I'm going to begin with the suppl rules of the early modern period will then return to Enlightenment Paris and take a closer look at Rumania. 68 00:09:49,080 --> 00:09:52,380 In both theory and in practise, 69 00:09:52,380 --> 00:10:04,710 and I'll conclude with some speculative thoughts about why this new kind then new kind of rigid rule emerged as an ideal, if not a reality. 70 00:10:04,710 --> 00:10:14,670 When and where it did, and why it has endured and is still very much with us in this age of algorithms for everything. 71 00:10:14,670 --> 00:10:20,280 So let me begin in the 16th century. We are in Nuremberg. 72 00:10:20,280 --> 00:10:34,810 The year is 15 25. The artist Albirex Drew, who has dedicated a manual on geometry for the use of painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, carpenters. 73 00:10:34,810 --> 00:10:43,060 Stonemasons and all those who use measurement in their trade to his humanist friend Willy Bode here Como, 74 00:10:43,060 --> 00:10:52,540 as befits its intended readership of artisans dirty little treatise unto advising their missing, 75 00:10:52,540 --> 00:10:58,510 sometimes published under the title as devising their kunst, is written in the German vernacular. 76 00:10:58,510 --> 00:11:09,610 It's not written in Latin, but the dedication to a renowned classical scholar like Pierre Coma hints at dirs ambitions to 77 00:11:09,610 --> 00:11:18,580 elevate the status of these lowly crafts and also to associate them with what he calls the lost, 78 00:11:18,580 --> 00:11:27,770 excuse me, the lost art of the Greeks and the Romans. 79 00:11:27,770 --> 00:11:39,260 He writes that painters and other artisans who learnt their craft entirely from daily practise were like wild, 80 00:11:39,260 --> 00:11:45,290 unproved trees and were rightly laughed at by connoisseurs and herders, 81 00:11:45,290 --> 00:11:56,330 almost certainly alluding to his own unpleasant experiences when he first arrived in Italy and was ridiculed by his Italian colleagues, 82 00:11:56,330 --> 00:12:04,790 Dumber promises that by mastering the geometry of the straight edge and compass of constructions like this one, 83 00:12:04,790 --> 00:12:12,740 such art hungry youth, as he calls them would improve their minds as well as their handiwork. 84 00:12:12,740 --> 00:12:19,670 Dedicate dedicated a pistol rings the changes on themes that were endlessly repeated in hundreds, 85 00:12:19,670 --> 00:12:30,290 if not thousands, of books on how to do everything that began to roll from the presses in the 15th century. 86 00:12:30,290 --> 00:12:37,610 These are books which intend to turn the banaszak handicrafts into genuine arts. 87 00:12:37,610 --> 00:12:46,880 So remember briefly, that there is a kind of hierarchy set up between ski into a form of knowledge, 88 00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:55,310 which is associated with the university, which delivers universal necessary knowledge of causes. 89 00:12:55,310 --> 00:13:00,800 Then there are the arts, first and foremost the liberal arts, which, 90 00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:07,850 if they cannot deliver necessary universal knowledge, at least deliver a rule, govern knowledge. 91 00:13:07,850 --> 00:13:18,620 And then below that, there are the banality trades, which are at least in the hierarchy devised by the learnt a matter of blind routine repetition. 92 00:13:18,620 --> 00:13:23,180 What Drucker and many of the other authors of these handbooks, 93 00:13:23,180 --> 00:13:28,490 these How-To manuals of the early modern period want to do is to elevate the status of the 94 00:13:28,490 --> 00:13:35,180 so-called mechanical arts to a position which could vie with thought of the liberal arts. 95 00:13:35,180 --> 00:13:43,460 And they are doing so by following the cicerone and dictum that an art can be reduced to rules. 96 00:13:43,460 --> 00:13:48,200 This is not only a formula for improving the status of artisans. 97 00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:53,030 It's a formula for improving their mobility in every sense of the word. 98 00:13:53,030 --> 00:14:02,330 Early modern courts are in competition with one another for doctors, cooks, artists, 99 00:14:02,330 --> 00:14:08,960 military engineers, whoever could and rich defend and embellish the court. 100 00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:20,180 This meant that artisans like Doura could pretty much write their own ticket and have a career that was first and foremost 101 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:27,350 far more lucrative than one might have had had he remained in his native Nuremberg as a goldsmith as his father had been, 102 00:14:27,350 --> 00:14:38,300 but also one which promised worldly fame. This combination is captured in a fifteen eighty three engraving by the Dutch artist. 103 00:14:38,300 --> 00:14:51,770 Hendrik Galtier's called ours at Uzis Art and Practise, and what we see here is the winged figure of hours of art and notice that she is struggling. 104 00:14:51,770 --> 00:14:58,430 He or she seised upon a globe to suggest the worldly fame that comes from listening 105 00:14:58,430 --> 00:15:02,840 to her instruction and at her feet are books and geometrical instruments. 106 00:15:02,840 --> 00:15:07,400 She is instructing the male figure of practise who is drawing. 107 00:15:07,400 --> 00:15:15,500 Drawing is another technique of planting one's work ahead of time recommended by these handbooks. 108 00:15:15,500 --> 00:15:26,780 And here you see in the corner the hourglass, suggesting time because only experience can sediment practise. 109 00:15:26,780 --> 00:15:30,920 And between these two, the partnership of hours at Uzis. 110 00:15:30,920 --> 00:15:38,630 According to Goltz Yess legend, for this engraving, which is in both Dutch and Latin, 111 00:15:38,630 --> 00:15:44,510 it will bring riches and worldly fame to the artisan and guiltiest who himself came from 112 00:15:44,510 --> 00:15:52,700 very modest origins and also was severely crippled through an accident in his right hand. 113 00:15:52,700 --> 00:15:59,150 His own meteoric career bore witness to the success of this formula. 114 00:15:59,150 --> 00:16:05,090 The 15th and 16th centuries were the first age of rule mania. 115 00:16:05,090 --> 00:16:13,970 In addition to books like Duras that provided artisans with rules to guide their proctors, practise philosophers, courtiers, 116 00:16:13,970 --> 00:16:24,990 doctors and teachers, published rules on how to sense how to dance, how to swim, how to travel, how to spell and besiege of. 117 00:16:24,990 --> 00:16:32,010 Fortified city even treatises on how to discover new truths of which latter Descartes, 118 00:16:32,010 --> 00:16:38,490 just Google, the method of 16:37 is only the most famous example. 119 00:16:38,490 --> 00:16:48,000 So what exactly were these rules? I can only give you a kind of scattering of examples, but I think they're fairly representative of the genre. 120 00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:56,250 So let's start with a treatise first published in 1956 and republished multiple times. 121 00:16:56,250 --> 00:17:03,390 This is the sixteen thirty four edition by the English mathematical practitioner Leonard Diggs, 122 00:17:03,390 --> 00:17:14,880 who is instructing land surveyors on how to use what he calls diverse and most certain and sufficient rules. 123 00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:19,770 Touching the measure of all manner of surfaces of timber, stone, 124 00:17:19,770 --> 00:17:33,000 glass and land and digs like dirt reproaches the heady and self-willed craftsmen who adhere to their own practise unguided by rules, 125 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:39,660 and he wraps himself in the mantle of the infallible grounds as he calls them of geometry. 126 00:17:39,660 --> 00:17:48,840 And you see here that in on the title page of the surveyors are using various mathematical siting instruments. 127 00:17:48,840 --> 00:17:55,800 Yet his alternative rules are not only expressed almost entirely by means of examples. 128 00:17:55,800 --> 00:18:01,620 He also cautions that discretion must be exercised in order to simplify calculations. 129 00:18:01,620 --> 00:18:06,480 Quoting from Diggs, it were intolerable tediousness. Yay. 130 00:18:06,480 --> 00:18:14,910 Impossible to set forth the true quantities of timber measure to all odd quantity of squares. 131 00:18:14,910 --> 00:18:23,280 The discreet handling of these the witty shall bring to a sufficient exactness, so the message is clear rules. 132 00:18:23,280 --> 00:18:30,750 Even mathematical rules had to be tweaked by judgement when applied to specific cases. 133 00:18:30,750 --> 00:18:42,630 Another example In a very similar vein, the early 17th century Welsh composer Elway Bevan explained on how to write musical canons, 134 00:18:42,630 --> 00:18:51,900 which are the most mathematical form of what was still then a branch of mathematics, namely harmonics. 135 00:18:51,900 --> 00:19:01,320 Bevan also instructs the would be composer not so much by rules as by heaps and heaps of examples. 136 00:19:01,320 --> 00:19:09,690 We now consider canons to be the most mechanically rule bound of all musical genres. 137 00:19:09,690 --> 00:19:20,670 And it's not an accident that the very first computer compositions were of musical canons, but Bevan proceeds from simple example. 138 00:19:20,670 --> 00:19:32,100 So by taking plainsong and using alternating rest in the different lines to get at least some form of of polyphony 139 00:19:32,100 --> 00:19:41,790 to ones which are so complex that he compares them to the frame of the whole world made up of the elements of air, 140 00:19:41,790 --> 00:19:49,470 earth, fire and water. This is a this is his picture of this canon in four voices. 141 00:19:49,470 --> 00:19:55,230 All of this takes place without so much as a faint at formalisation. 142 00:19:55,230 --> 00:20:00,300 I take these examples because I want to show that even the mathematical sciences like arithmetic, 143 00:20:00,300 --> 00:20:10,350 measurement and harmonics were codified as much by examples as by rules in these handbooks, or to put it more accurately. 144 00:20:10,350 --> 00:20:14,310 The examples were part and parcel of the rule. 145 00:20:14,310 --> 00:20:24,780 So let me give you yet another example. This, perhaps from a context which is more prototypical of rules, namely rules of games. 146 00:20:24,780 --> 00:20:34,200 A London man about town, Charles Cotton, published in 1887, a treatise called the complete game Stir, 147 00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:40,560 in which he sets forth the rules in a lot more than the rules on horse racing, 148 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:44,190 billiards, chess, all manner of card games, 149 00:20:44,190 --> 00:20:51,090 cockfighting just about any form of what he calls the enchanting witchery of gaming that was going on at that time. 150 00:20:51,090 --> 00:20:58,230 In the more lush sections of London, cotton is profligate into tales of all kinds. 151 00:20:58,230 --> 00:21:06,420 This is a real brick of a volume, the complete treatise. He is not only tells you how to play card games like this one, 152 00:21:06,420 --> 00:21:16,470 he tells you to watch out when you're bending over looking at your cards that someone doesn't strip off the gold buttons on your waistcoat. 153 00:21:16,470 --> 00:21:20,670 Why you? You're in a state of concentration, he tells you. 154 00:21:20,670 --> 00:21:24,880 Never bet on a fighting cock unless you've been to visit the. 155 00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:30,700 Courtyard and heard how frequently it grows in comparison to the others. 156 00:21:30,700 --> 00:21:38,200 He tells you if you have a horse that you want to race, make sure that it empties its bowels before it starts the race. 157 00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:44,080 This is a man who leaves no detail unsaid. 158 00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:53,500 Various orders and laws and rules are set forth for the various games, many of which we would readily recognise as rules of the game. 159 00:21:53,500 --> 00:21:59,170 So one of the rules is if you touch a chess piece, then you have to play it. 160 00:21:59,170 --> 00:22:09,980 But Cotton continually warns his readers that many of these games can only be played through long observation and experience. 161 00:22:09,980 --> 00:22:13,780 So there's some game. Perhaps some of you know it, it must be fiendishly difficult. 162 00:22:13,780 --> 00:22:17,530 It's called Irish, and he says there's no way of giving the rules to this. 163 00:22:17,530 --> 00:22:26,020 You just have to watch other people play Irish and even in chess, which is the subject of one of the book's longest chapters. 164 00:22:26,020 --> 00:22:34,510 Cotton toys with the idea of first that chess as well as draughts quote, may be played by a certain rule. 165 00:22:34,510 --> 00:22:38,740 But after about 20 pages of detailed instructions, 166 00:22:38,740 --> 00:22:45,250 he concludes quote many more observations might be here inserted for the understanding of this noble game, 167 00:22:45,250 --> 00:22:48,790 which I am forced to waive to avoid prolix city. 168 00:22:48,790 --> 00:22:53,950 So Cotton is interested not only in telling you what we would consider to be the rules that proper of the game. 169 00:22:53,950 --> 00:23:02,410 He's interested in telling you how to win. So, for example, he gives values for the pieces in chess, which are very much like the values we have now. 170 00:23:02,410 --> 00:23:11,170 That is a bishop is worth more than a knight. But he says, look, if you notice that your adversary likes to use his night, 171 00:23:11,170 --> 00:23:17,200 you should be willing to sacrifice your bishop to put that night out of commission. 172 00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:22,660 That's as much of a rule as how the night can can move in. 173 00:23:22,660 --> 00:23:26,320 Cotton's treatise these examples of rules, 174 00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:31,210 which I've called more or less at random from early modern handbooks on how to 175 00:23:31,210 --> 00:23:37,600 measure would compose a canon or win it games could easily be supplemented by many, 176 00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:39,400 many more from the same period. 177 00:23:39,400 --> 00:23:49,300 There are treatises on how to make jams, how to start a pig farm, how to dredge a ditch, how to draw in perspective, how to pass a bill in parliament. 178 00:23:49,300 --> 00:23:55,540 Generally, anything you need to get on with daily life in an orderly manner. 179 00:23:55,540 --> 00:24:05,840 In today's parlance, to call an activity an art is to draw attention to its implicit intuitive aspect. 180 00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:13,330 So, for example, when we say that medicine is an art as well as a science, we are contrasting. 181 00:24:13,330 --> 00:24:20,920 It's more formalised, rule governed. Part two is more savoir faire aspects. 182 00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:24,460 The meaning of art in the early modern period is quite different. 183 00:24:24,460 --> 00:24:32,560 It's to render explicit by rules what white might have been seen as implicit practise. 184 00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:42,490 And this becomes an obsession not only for the authors of these rules and method books, but also for governments. 185 00:24:42,490 --> 00:24:46,540 Cobell is only perhaps the most successful. 186 00:24:46,540 --> 00:24:51,670 I assume that this is a case where the night has just been taken. 187 00:24:51,670 --> 00:25:00,700 Cobell is only one of the most successful of reforming mercantilist ministers of the 17th 188 00:25:00,700 --> 00:25:11,440 century who publish treatises of rules to improve the quality of artisanal products for export. 189 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:19,750 In order to fill the royal coffers in this case, he was particularly interested in the silk market in France, 190 00:25:19,750 --> 00:25:27,040 and this is one of the many patterns that was published for the guidance of William Silk Weavers. 191 00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:38,440 The rules of art brought to haphazard practise a certain order, and they elevated the prestige of the artisans. 192 00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:44,380 But rules did not eliminate the need for discretion and experience. 193 00:25:44,380 --> 00:25:50,770 They were always formulated with an eye toward inevitable exceptions. 194 00:25:50,770 --> 00:25:59,620 The rules, as I said, are not freestanding models. Examples, tips and observations prop them up and filled them out. 195 00:25:59,620 --> 00:26:10,120 This isn't because the rules were unnecessarily vague or unspecific or undertale, some of them fulminate with detail. 196 00:26:10,120 --> 00:26:20,680 Rather, it was because no universal formulation was expected to be able to do justice to particular circumstances, 197 00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:24,870 even if the authors of these books had never read Aristotle. 198 00:26:24,870 --> 00:26:32,760 Nicole McKee in Ethics. They were well aware of the problem that Aristotle formulates in the NICKLEBY and ethics concerning legislation, 199 00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:42,510 which is no lawmaker can foresee all of the particular cases which such a law may eventually confront. 200 00:26:42,510 --> 00:26:47,790 And therefore, the judge will have to, in our Suttles words, 201 00:26:47,790 --> 00:26:59,250 imagine himself in the position of the original legislator in order to avoid injustice in certain particular cases. 202 00:26:59,250 --> 00:27:01,680 This is the law of of of equity. 203 00:27:01,680 --> 00:27:14,970 Even if the authors of these books had never heard of the law of Equity, they were very much adhering to Aristotle's warnings about the necessary, 204 00:27:14,970 --> 00:27:23,310 in our subtle view, necessary constraints upon on all universals applied to variable subject matter. 205 00:27:23,310 --> 00:27:31,080 So the differing degree of pungency of an exotic spice that might change your recipe or 206 00:27:31,080 --> 00:27:37,140 the knot in the wood that might force the carpenter to swerve from an initial plan. 207 00:27:37,140 --> 00:27:47,950 Those were the sorts of particulars which were assumed to be absolutely ubiquitous and inevitable, and therefore the rules had to do them justice. 208 00:27:47,950 --> 00:27:55,410 And now take us back to 18th century Paris and a rather different kind of rule. 209 00:27:55,410 --> 00:28:03,870 If the rules of the first wave of rule mania in the early modern period were thick rules cocooned in their 210 00:28:03,870 --> 00:28:14,820 examples and exceptions and appeals to experience the rules of the 18th century Parisian bureaucrats within rules. 211 00:28:14,820 --> 00:28:20,340 So we are now in Paris. The year is 1749. 212 00:28:20,340 --> 00:28:32,670 This is a manuscript submitted by an officer of the Paris police to Louis, the 15th exquisitely illustrated by Gabriel S. Obama. 213 00:28:32,670 --> 00:28:36,570 And it shows the invention of licence plates. 214 00:28:36,570 --> 00:28:44,190 So what one sees here is that there are going to be a if the recommendations in this manuscript are followed, 215 00:28:44,190 --> 00:28:47,580 their every fiasco is going to have a number up here. 216 00:28:47,580 --> 00:28:57,660 So the police will know who the miscreants are and every cart horse on its with milk here is going to have its number over here. 217 00:28:57,660 --> 00:29:03,930 The author of this treatise is Francois Jacques Griot, who is an officer of the constabulary. 218 00:29:03,930 --> 00:29:11,640 He is resident in Paris, friend of. He lives in the same building, we think in the WHO moved out as Dero, 219 00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:19,260 and he also proposes in this same treatise the numbering of Powers Houses the numbering of the staircases in Paris, 220 00:29:19,260 --> 00:29:23,520 houses the numbering of the apartments, the doors in Paris houses. 221 00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:34,740 He imagines a kind of identity card that will allow the police to trace the movements of passers by, then circa 500000 residents. 222 00:29:34,740 --> 00:29:46,860 He imagines a gigantic paper shuffling machine that will allow the officials at the camera, at the police to at the. 223 00:29:46,860 --> 00:29:50,070 So what you see here is see these giant wheels here. 224 00:29:50,070 --> 00:30:01,170 They got there. They're sort of like the book wheels that you sometimes see in a depictions in early modern libraries and but underneath their desks, 225 00:30:01,170 --> 00:30:13,260 these functionaries have a pedal which moves on the wheels and can summon up one of millions of dossiers to the touch of a foot. 226 00:30:13,260 --> 00:30:21,150 He wants to weave a finely meshed net of policing that will, in his own words, 227 00:30:21,150 --> 00:30:28,950 leave everyone the freedom to do good but make doing evil extremely difficult. 228 00:30:28,950 --> 00:30:39,840 He's obsessed with the regulation of every aspect of the booming, expanding and notoriously unruly city of Paris circa 1750, 229 00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:46,200 and it's no wonder Michele Fuko was fascinated, morbidly fascinated with this treatise. 230 00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:54,900 It is a phantasmagoria of surveillance and control, but it is a complete fantasy. 231 00:30:54,900 --> 00:31:01,440 As one look at the actual efforts of the police to keep even a semblance of order in 18th century, 232 00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:11,310 Paris confirms, I've already read you a quotation describing the kind of chaos of mules, 233 00:31:11,310 --> 00:31:22,800 pedestrians, carts, carriages, market stands competing for space in the absolutely filthy streets of 18th century Paris. 234 00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:27,350 You've got to imagine not only. Are the streets, for the most part, very narrow. 235 00:31:27,350 --> 00:31:31,460 They are heaped with garbage and also building materials because there's a 236 00:31:31,460 --> 00:31:36,710 building boom going on and you have to put the bricks and the masonry someplace. 237 00:31:36,710 --> 00:31:46,010 And moreover, to most streets starting in sort of the early 19th century are what are called in French Bombay, which means they're convex. 238 00:31:46,010 --> 00:31:54,260 So there's a slight hump in the middle so that water and refuse can flow into gutters on the sides of the street. 239 00:31:54,260 --> 00:31:57,530 This implies that you have a well working gutter system. 240 00:31:57,530 --> 00:32:13,490 The streets of Paris are still concave, so they have in the middle a filthy stream of revenues that is meant eventually to flow into the sand. 241 00:32:13,490 --> 00:32:18,230 There is this a I think the hood initialled in the 5th, 242 00:32:18,230 --> 00:32:29,210 the 6th arrondissement still has a structure that you can see the Latin with a few remnants of of this form of a street design. 243 00:32:29,210 --> 00:32:36,560 So the streets, they're congested, they're filthy, and they're also really dangerous. 244 00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:45,770 When in the 1770s, the first sidewalks for pedestrians were created on the pontiff. 245 00:32:45,770 --> 00:32:57,530 It was a seven days wonder as the words 2.2L and 01:12 suggest these raised walkways were originally meant not for pedestrians, 246 00:32:57,530 --> 00:33:07,580 but for horsemen to mount their steed to get a leg up to mount this as a Montréal 212, et cetera. 247 00:33:07,580 --> 00:33:13,340 No one had seen anything like it that the pedestrians actually had a place of their own to walk. 248 00:33:13,340 --> 00:33:16,850 From the late 16th century to the mid-19th century. 249 00:33:16,850 --> 00:33:25,670 The Parisian police and municipal administration saw their chief task as the conquest of public space, 250 00:33:25,670 --> 00:33:31,760 which often boiled down to keeping the streets clean and traffic flowing. 251 00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:43,640 This was no easy task. Paris, like many early modern European cities, was freed from its constraining mediaeval walls and 17th century. 252 00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:59,990 So what happens is that with siege warfare and fortifications, you move the site of warfare to a series of fortified garrisons on the border. 253 00:33:59,990 --> 00:34:11,300 This is what happens after the martial volleyball Louis, the 14th legendary field commander, wins several key battles. 254 00:34:11,300 --> 00:34:17,420 That means that these mediaeval cities can tear down their walls and start to expand. 255 00:34:17,420 --> 00:34:22,640 And that's exactly what happened. You can see you can see here that will go back of the seventeen thirties. 256 00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:31,190 You can see the tracing of the old walls, and what you start to get is a lot of building and what are being called the Faubourg. 257 00:34:31,190 --> 00:34:49,100 The football company here. And you also get a use of the repurposed ramparts, which all return in a few minutes in which they are turned into. 258 00:34:49,100 --> 00:34:54,920 So here this is from the port. Somebody needs to sample one. 259 00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:58,940 What you get here is so this would have been the top of the ramparts. 260 00:34:58,940 --> 00:35:03,620 It's now being turned into Paris's first broad boulevards and nuked. 261 00:35:03,620 --> 00:35:11,780 And it's a little hard to make out here. These little dots are actually rows of trees planted at strictly regulated intervals. 262 00:35:11,780 --> 00:35:23,660 I'll say more about that in in a moment. This is a city where the population and commercial activity are skyrocketing. 263 00:35:23,660 --> 00:35:29,930 The rising revenues from the North Atlantic trade triggers a building building boom. 264 00:35:29,930 --> 00:35:38,990 And by 1779, Paris is estimated to have about 50000 houses, 17 public squares, 265 00:35:38,990 --> 00:35:49,850 a 975 streets of wits ranging from two to 20 metres, and a population of about 650000 people. 266 00:35:49,850 --> 00:36:07,800 A city that had had eight carriages in 1994 had about six, had about 300 in sixteen sixty and somewhere between 14000 and 20000 in 1722. 267 00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:14,450 A sign, as I say, from these newly created broad boulevards on the city's repurposed ramparts. 268 00:36:14,450 --> 00:36:24,700 Most of the streets are sinuous higgledy piggledy with the facades of the houses they see. 269 00:36:24,700 --> 00:36:33,460 Every which way. Here is the room move, dad where Gilbert lived, which is then as now a market street. 270 00:36:33,460 --> 00:36:39,970 So one of the streets where traffic was particularly congested, 271 00:36:39,970 --> 00:36:52,840 it's no wonder that got played with the fantasy of just raising the whole city to the ground and starting over again. 272 00:36:52,840 --> 00:37:00,820 As I say it, the Parisian police who have to deal with all of this, not just keeping the peace and catching criminals. 273 00:37:00,820 --> 00:37:09,520 They are from 16 sixty seven on responsible for almost all aspects of urban administration and 274 00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:18,340 assuring not only the safety but also the comfort and convenience and prosperity of Paris's citizens. 275 00:37:18,340 --> 00:37:22,240 This is a period starting in the late 17th century at about the time the Office 276 00:37:22,240 --> 00:37:28,090 of the Lieutenant of Police is created when early modern European cities, 277 00:37:28,090 --> 00:37:35,020 at least a few of them, like Amsterdam, Paris and London, start to compete with one another. 278 00:37:35,020 --> 00:37:44,140 Amsterdam is the poster child for what a orderly will govern city should look like. 279 00:37:44,140 --> 00:37:55,300 Here you see the map that is going to extend the canal system of Amsterdam and a completely symmetric fashion. 280 00:37:55,300 --> 00:38:01,750 Visitors to Paris or to Amsterdam marvel at the cleanliness, 281 00:38:01,750 --> 00:38:10,270 the handsome and uniform street facades, the efficient sewage system, the spacious public squares, 282 00:38:10,270 --> 00:38:21,700 the night-time illumination by oil lamps of the strictly regulated traffic and the workhouses to keep beggars out of the public eye. 283 00:38:21,700 --> 00:38:34,420 Paris and London in the late 17th century fall painfully short of the standards set by Amsterdam and by the late 17th century. 284 00:38:34,420 --> 00:38:44,200 Not only are travellers, but official delegations visiting each other's cities to take note of their innovations and 285 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:53,140 try to import it home after the creation of the Office of the Paris Lieutenant of Police, 286 00:38:53,140 --> 00:39:01,810 who has approximately 50 commie cells stationed in the city's neighbourhoods, reporting to him on a daily basis, 287 00:39:01,810 --> 00:39:07,310 thousands of dossiers start to be collected and filed chronologically and alphabetically. 288 00:39:07,310 --> 00:39:17,620 Remember that paper shuffling machine that quiet fantasises about the police become in part because of this competition amongst cities, 289 00:39:17,620 --> 00:39:26,590 the avant garde of Europe's bureaucracy? When, for instance, the empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 290 00:39:26,590 --> 00:39:34,810 Multi-taskers wants to set up her own when she wants to basically upgrade Vienna as her capital. 291 00:39:34,810 --> 00:39:40,900 She writes to the Parisian lieutenant of police to give her recommendations. 292 00:39:40,900 --> 00:39:50,980 It's no accident that it's fantasies not only about surveillance, but also paperwork centred on the Parisian police and who you see once again, 293 00:39:50,980 --> 00:39:58,150 these officials consulting the many, many dossiers kept on every aspect of powers. 294 00:39:58,150 --> 00:40:07,600 Releasing a good deal of that mass of paperwork was generated by the regulations I've already mentioned, 295 00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:17,230 and many of these regulations are issued multiple times and they're about everything who can have a chemical laboratory. 296 00:40:17,230 --> 00:40:25,000 Only doctors and apothecaries. What is the minimum age for driving a hired carriage? 297 00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:29,560 18. How should you celebrate a royal birth? 298 00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:34,750 Candles in the window? Yes. Firing guns into the air? No. 299 00:40:34,750 --> 00:40:47,590 The proper placement of chimneys. How gold and silver should be used only for coinage, except for the occasional cross for an archbishop. 300 00:40:47,590 --> 00:40:57,640 What can and cannot be worn in public? So imported Swiss cotton, Italian lace and any kind of embroidery are prohibited. 301 00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:05,620 The spacing of trees planted along main thoroughfares at least 18 feet apart and innumerable 302 00:41:05,620 --> 00:41:09,980 prohibitions of the sort that I began with against blocking the streets with trash, 303 00:41:09,980 --> 00:41:16,240 snow carts, animals, stalls or ball games. 304 00:41:16,240 --> 00:41:24,500 These regulations were rather limited efficacy. Here is a slightly exotic. 305 00:41:24,500 --> 00:41:29,750 Rated view of the pontiff on a bad day, 306 00:41:29,750 --> 00:41:36,650 and you can see that all the regulations that you're not supposed to have markets so these these are these are the famous 212 the sidewalks here. 307 00:41:36,650 --> 00:41:42,410 This was to have market stands cluttering them. You're certainly not supposed to have the pedestrians in the middle of the street. 308 00:41:42,410 --> 00:41:49,280 They're supposed to be on the sidewalks. And you see also here what this can lead to. 309 00:41:49,280 --> 00:42:00,950 This poor water carrier is being kicked by a horse who has been spooked by someone driving their cattle through the turf. 310 00:42:00,950 --> 00:42:07,640 When you read through all of these ordinances decade by decade, 311 00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:17,690 you occasionally catch a glimpse of the episodes that Enlightenment historians habitually uses landmarks of the era. 312 00:42:17,690 --> 00:42:26,120 So, for example, an ordinance closing the San Medalled cemetery in the wake of the alleged miraculous 313 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:34,010 cures of the convicts younow or the banning the suppressing of the all sick paddy. 314 00:42:34,010 --> 00:42:44,390 But these are really just drops in a huge ocean of regulations that occupied the Parisian police day in, day out. 315 00:42:44,390 --> 00:42:49,280 The scope and the detail of these regulations is staggering. 316 00:42:49,280 --> 00:43:00,110 A heroic effort to anticipate, counter and regulate every aspect of urban life, as Montesquieu said of the police in this plea deal, 317 00:43:00,110 --> 00:43:08,000 while they are perpetually concerned with details with regulations rather than laws. 318 00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:15,890 But apparently all of this bureaucratic foresight, surveillance and recordkeeping was largely in vain. 319 00:43:15,890 --> 00:43:24,530 All of these infringements carried fines and some even prison sentences and those daily reports from the neighbourhood. 320 00:43:24,530 --> 00:43:30,170 Those 50 neighbourhood copies sell on infractions, provide evidence of vigilance and enforcement. 321 00:43:30,170 --> 00:43:33,770 So every Tuesday and every Friday, the lieutenant of the police, 322 00:43:33,770 --> 00:43:41,750 who also has the powers of a magistrate, is hearing cases of infractions of these regulations. 323 00:43:41,750 --> 00:43:51,200 So he's handing down, for example, a truly hefty fine of 300 leaflets to one dim wasn't cook resident in the Bhutani, 324 00:43:51,200 --> 00:44:04,730 who was spotted wearing a dress of court contraband called DNA printed with red roses or a lighter fine of 100 sue to the widow Shihad, 325 00:44:04,730 --> 00:44:09,350 who had emptied the contents of her chamber pot onto the street below. 326 00:44:09,350 --> 00:44:15,320 At nine p.m. one January evening, it was not considered exculpatory. 327 00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:22,370 First together, Gallo. Watch out below as a warning to passers by beforehand. 328 00:44:22,370 --> 00:44:28,880 More serious offences such as riding faster than a trot and recidivists were fined more 329 00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:36,500 heavily armed because the chemical usually cashier a cut of whatever fine was levied. 330 00:44:36,500 --> 00:44:42,410 They had every motive to report the miscreants. 331 00:44:42,410 --> 00:44:49,940 Yet the sheer number of times that these ordinances were reissued absolutely verbatim, 332 00:44:49,940 --> 00:44:59,990 except for an increasingly hysterical preamble about the iniquity of the Parisians that made it necessary to reissue the regulations. 333 00:44:59,990 --> 00:45:03,410 This is, I think, damning evidence of their futility. 334 00:45:03,410 --> 00:45:15,260 So recall the examples that I began with the police ordinance of November 28th 1750 on street cleaning repeats the edicts of sixty three and 16, 335 00:45:15,260 --> 00:45:18,710 66 and 1740 for verbatim the edicts. 336 00:45:18,710 --> 00:45:24,440 Banning games from power streets were issued 17 times between sixteen, 337 00:45:24,440 --> 00:45:34,850 sixty seven and 1750 for a 16 44 royal decree prohibiting yet again imported lace despaired. 338 00:45:34,850 --> 00:45:37,070 Now, quoting from the preamble, 339 00:45:37,070 --> 00:45:49,460 experience has shown that heretofore all regulations made by the kings or predecessors and by ourselves have been futile and not executed, 340 00:45:49,460 --> 00:45:53,810 having served only to just fly display defiance to their authority. 341 00:45:53,810 --> 00:46:01,550 The weakness of the magistrates and the corruption of the manners of this century in the 342 00:46:01,550 --> 00:46:09,860 face of such humiliating failure to get Parisians to shovel their snow forswear lace, 343 00:46:09,860 --> 00:46:16,970 stop playing ball in the streets or place their trash in the appointed containers at the appointed hours. 344 00:46:16,970 --> 00:46:24,570 The response of the police bureaucracy was to issue yet more regulations even more. 345 00:46:24,570 --> 00:46:34,290 Detailed and to redouble surveillance and reporting Wyatt's manuscript treatise of 1749 for Louie, 346 00:46:34,290 --> 00:46:44,320 the 15th recommended more police inspectors, more reports, more registration and observation of everyone and everything. 347 00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:51,210 Here's his his suggested form for registering all Parisians where they come from, where they're living. 348 00:46:51,210 --> 00:46:54,900 Have they paid their taxes, their comings and goings? 349 00:46:54,900 --> 00:47:06,570 What in retrospect looks like a glaring example of rule failure was interpreted at the time as a call for rule repair. 350 00:47:06,570 --> 00:47:11,910 If the existing rules had encountered resistance and exceptions, 351 00:47:11,910 --> 00:47:21,360 the solution was to weave an ever tighter mesh of rules, darning the loopholes catching the scofflaws. 352 00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:29,910 This bureaucratic reflex to rule failure is so familiar to us that we no longer query its authority. 353 00:47:29,910 --> 00:47:40,590 Why should the response to failed rules be yet more rules, and not just more of the very same repeal rules repeated verbatim? 354 00:47:40,590 --> 00:47:48,360 What dilution of order held the famously worldly lieutenant of police in its thrall? 355 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,870 The lieutenant of police men like yourself, teen and Linn? 356 00:47:51,870 --> 00:47:56,490 Well, these were famously worldly men. 357 00:47:56,490 --> 00:48:05,670 They they knew everyone's secrets. They knew literally and figuratively where all the bodies were buried. 358 00:48:05,670 --> 00:48:14,790 And yet yet these really hard headed men of action seem to believe that if they 359 00:48:14,790 --> 00:48:19,590 just issued those rules against ball playing in the streets one more time, 360 00:48:19,590 --> 00:48:28,800 it might actually take hold. The lieutenants of the Paris police, who were arguably France's and perhaps Europe's foremost bureaucrats, 361 00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:35,010 clung to the fantasy of a perfect rule that would ensure perfect order. 362 00:48:35,010 --> 00:48:40,800 They refused to give in to the recalcitrance of the Parisians. 363 00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:50,730 Rules had stiffened. So what accounts for this obstinacy in the face of abject failure? 364 00:48:50,730 --> 00:49:02,250 Time and time again, why were so many ordinances neither scrapped nor amended but simply reissued verbatim, 365 00:49:02,250 --> 00:49:12,570 except for an increasingly ill tempered preamble? Despite the evident refusal of most Parisians to pay them any heed, 366 00:49:12,570 --> 00:49:18,030 the explanations of this lamentable state of affairs in the preambles ranged from 367 00:49:18,030 --> 00:49:26,520 the conciliatory so the preamble of one 17:35 reissue fire regulations suggest, 368 00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:34,500 well, maybe we'll just forgot the earlier regulations. They ranged from the indulgent in that to the indignant. 369 00:49:34,500 --> 00:49:46,710 It is intolerable that people are still wearing banned lace once again and melting down gold and silver coins to make buttons to flatter their party. 370 00:49:46,710 --> 00:49:55,560 Historians of Paris document the resistance of the Parisians and the inadequacy of the regulations to bring chaos under control, 371 00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:06,180 but they rarely remark upon the puzzling obstinacy and inflexibility of the regulations themselves. 372 00:50:06,180 --> 00:50:15,720 The Roumania of the early modern period with which I began was just as prolific in rules, 373 00:50:15,720 --> 00:50:25,410 just as confident that the right rules would solve all problems from learning how to swim to arriving at self-evident truths. 374 00:50:25,410 --> 00:50:30,840 But the earlier examples of rules which I gave had been sick rules. 375 00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:39,480 They'd given you a great deal of latitude in how to apply them, and they had been supple in the face of exceptions. 376 00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:46,650 In contrast, those of the police bringing order to Enlightenment Paris were thin and rigid. 377 00:50:46,650 --> 00:50:58,440 It was as if in the imaginary of the rule makers, Aristotle's problem of universals and particulars had been solved, at least within city limits. 378 00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:07,950 And if it hadn't, the solution was to repeat the selfsame rules again until they were eventually obeyed. 379 00:51:07,950 --> 00:51:14,550 It was as if the Parisian police suffered from some kind of obsessive compulsive neurosis, 380 00:51:14,550 --> 00:51:24,280 doomed to repeat the same futile rules year after year, decade after decade unable or unwilling to adjust. 381 00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:30,280 To circumstances, why a clue lies, 382 00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:38,620 I think in the competition that I've already mentioned amongst European metropolises that began in the late 383 00:51:38,620 --> 00:51:46,180 17th century and gathered momentum throughout the 18th century and has never stopped ever since Amsterdam, 384 00:51:46,180 --> 00:51:51,490 Paris and London begin this competition. They're not only in competition with each other. 385 00:51:51,490 --> 00:52:00,430 They were emulating each other, implicitly establishing new standards who were the first rank city should look, 386 00:52:00,430 --> 00:52:13,030 sound and smell like when, for example, Amsterdam adopts a system of fire pumps and street lanterns. 387 00:52:13,030 --> 00:52:22,810 It is imported within a decade or so to Paris and London, Parisian displays of luxury goods in betweens on the loose, 388 00:52:22,810 --> 00:52:29,590 and they are duly imitated on London's fashionable shopping streets. 389 00:52:29,590 --> 00:52:42,520 Rival cities vied with each other for the most free flowing traffic, the most splendid parks and promenades, and the cleanest, best lit streets. 390 00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:46,810 Here we see the pontiff on a somewhat better day, 391 00:52:46,810 --> 00:52:55,330 although the stated goal of all of these improvements was the comfort, safety and convenience of the city dwellers. 392 00:52:55,330 --> 00:53:03,040 The authorities were acutely conscious of the judgements of foreigners when, for example, 393 00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:09,760 the Parisian police banned merchant stalls from the pontiff for the umpteenth time. 394 00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:16,120 They justified the regulations not just by pointing to traffic congestion, 395 00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:27,610 but also to the fact that the stalls blocked quote the most magnificent view and the one most worthy of admiration by foreigners. 396 00:53:27,610 --> 00:53:33,850 It is tempting to bundle all of the measures to control traffic and fight fires. 397 00:53:33,850 --> 00:53:37,840 Clean streets and beautiful views together as modernisation. 398 00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:46,840 And that's exactly how urban historians do refer to these efforts on the part of early modern western European metropolises. 399 00:53:46,840 --> 00:53:52,150 But I think it would be more accurate to say that this competition amongst cities, which, as I say, 400 00:53:52,150 --> 00:54:04,150 has never stopped, had very little to do with science and technology sort of the 19th century version of modernity, 401 00:54:04,150 --> 00:54:15,370 but rather with inventing a first version of modernity, which has everything to do with orderliness, predictability and with rules. 402 00:54:15,370 --> 00:54:28,150 So when M.C imagines Paris in 20 for 40, he does not imagine people in flying cars or other technological marvels. 403 00:54:28,150 --> 00:54:38,470 Instead, he imagines Parisians are still getting around on foot and on horses, but they are getting around in an orderly manner. 404 00:54:38,470 --> 00:54:54,340 This is the vision of the future in seven circa 1770, and it's a vision which has everything to do with a certain few pockets of urban life, 405 00:54:54,340 --> 00:55:09,250 which are attempting to not only remap the physical dimensions of the city, but to re-educate the city dwellers in a certain form of conduct. 406 00:55:09,250 --> 00:55:16,960 So rather than striving to realise a vision of modernity, the did not yet exist and certainly not under that name. 407 00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:26,980 Enlightenment Paris and its rivals were aiming at a vision already glimpsed in the uniform facades and the efficient sewage system. 408 00:55:26,980 --> 00:55:34,780 The free flowing traffic and night streets blazing with lanterns in a city like Amsterdam here was 409 00:55:34,780 --> 00:55:42,250 a city in which the radius of predictability and everyday life had been impressively extended, 410 00:55:42,250 --> 00:55:44,620 at least within city limits. 411 00:55:44,620 --> 00:55:53,650 It was no accident that the Dutch had also pioneered mathematically based annuities, lotteries and insurance schemes during the same period. 412 00:55:53,650 --> 00:56:05,380 All devices designed to rein in the role of chance in human affairs in his justly celebrated essay of 1977, 413 00:56:05,380 --> 00:56:10,780 The Passions and the Interests political arguments for capitalism before its triumph. 414 00:56:10,780 --> 00:56:19,300 Albert Hershman described how the vices of greed and pursuit of self-interest were morally 415 00:56:19,300 --> 00:56:24,840 rehabilitated by enlightenment thinkers such as Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith. 416 00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:35,460 These thinkers argued that even if the interests could not be considered full fledged virtues, they did make people calculable, 417 00:56:35,460 --> 00:56:43,140 and that was their great advantage over the more tempestuous passions of ambition, anger and lust. 418 00:56:43,140 --> 00:56:52,260 The interests begin, as Hershman says, as calm passions well suited to reigning in the tempestuous ones and ended up 419 00:56:52,260 --> 00:56:59,460 as demie virtues because they lubricated commerce and stabilised social life. 420 00:56:59,460 --> 00:57:06,060 What Hirschman does not explain is why the doctrine of the benign interests, 421 00:57:06,060 --> 00:57:12,990 which as his subtitle indicates and to date, the triumph of capitalism rather than rationalising it. 422 00:57:12,990 --> 00:57:18,760 Why this doctrine emerges when and where it does. 423 00:57:18,760 --> 00:57:28,510 Did the passions, after all, had been excoriated by philosophers since antiquity as enemies of reason? 424 00:57:28,510 --> 00:57:38,790 Why should the argument that the calmer interest could subdue the notoriously wild passions have been persuasive? 425 00:57:38,790 --> 00:57:44,850 And finally, why was it better to be predictable than to be truly good? 426 00:57:44,850 --> 00:57:54,750 I'd like to suggest that the answer to these questions about the rising stock of the interests gives us a clue to the 427 00:57:54,750 --> 00:58:04,470 answer of the question about why the Parisian police so stubbornly reissued their thousands of rules without adjustments, 428 00:58:04,470 --> 00:58:13,770 much less concessions of defeat. In both cases, it was a vision of partial success. 429 00:58:13,770 --> 00:58:27,390 Rather than bow to experience as a thick rules, had the municipal authorities banked on experience bowing to the rules in some places, 430 00:58:27,390 --> 00:58:36,270 few and no but populous and much publicised in both word and image was by early modern European standards. 431 00:58:36,270 --> 00:58:43,200 An astonishing degree of orderliness and predictability had been in fact achieved. 432 00:58:43,200 --> 00:58:56,100 I've already sketched the role that Amsterdam played in giving a tantalising example of what the iron willed municipal authorities might accomplish. 433 00:58:56,100 --> 00:59:05,520 But even in helter skelter Paris, microcosm of regularity brought about by regulation were emerging. 434 00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:13,980 Whereas in Boswell's London, the right of way was adjudicated amongst pedestrians by a cudgel. 435 00:59:13,980 --> 00:59:24,450 By 1786, London visitors were being advised that if they keep kept the walls of buildings to their right while walking, you will have no interruption. 436 00:59:24,450 --> 00:59:35,670 Everyone will give way. In Paris, it is the broad boulevards which I've already mentioned, which were created here on the city's former ramparts. 437 00:59:35,670 --> 00:59:45,390 And here this is. The The Boulevard bus to home fell about here, which gave something like the same kind of glimpse of the possible. 438 00:59:45,390 --> 00:59:49,380 I'd mentioned already that they're divided into lanes by the regularly planted trees. 439 00:59:49,380 --> 00:59:56,910 This means that for the first time, pedestrian horse and carriage traffic can be segregated, 440 00:59:56,910 --> 01:00:05,070 which isn't considered by the Parisians to be nothing short of a miracle. 441 01:00:05,070 --> 01:00:17,820 They're emblematic of another aspect of why here you see, they become an extremely popular promenade their emblem, 442 01:00:17,820 --> 01:00:27,000 their emblematic of another aspect of why the municipal authorities were obsessed with order and predictability. 443 01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:35,490 Once the mediaeval city walls had been rendered obsolete by new siege warfare, 444 01:00:35,490 --> 01:00:43,830 you are dealing with a city that seems to no no check on its population growth. 445 01:00:43,830 --> 01:00:46,920 This is also the case for London and Amsterdam. 446 01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:59,310 So Amsterdam had a population of circa 50000 and hundred and two hundred and thirty five thousand by 7500 in the same period. 447 01:00:59,310 --> 01:01:08,370 Paris swelled from ten thousand to about 500 and 15000 inhabitants on the eve of the French Revolution. 448 01:01:08,370 --> 01:01:15,180 As many as 630000 people were living in the city. London's growth curve was even steeper. 449 01:01:15,180 --> 01:01:18,840 These were cities that were bursting at the seams, 450 01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:28,050 and neither the physical infrastructure nor social customs could absorb so many newcomers without buckling under the strain. 451 01:01:28,050 --> 01:01:34,470 Eighteenth century almanacs of professions show that as population and prosperity waxed, 452 01:01:34,470 --> 01:01:46,440 trees became ever more specialised and interdependent between twice and four times as many people were jostling each other in the streets, 453 01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:51,990 throwing their waste out the windows, crowding both official and unofficial markets, 454 01:01:51,990 --> 01:02:03,030 and blocking thoroughfares with bricks and other building materials. They were generally interacting with more people in more ways than ever before. 455 01:02:03,030 --> 01:02:07,530 It's under these circumstances of high density, 456 01:02:07,530 --> 01:02:21,540 urban mobility and sociability that a premium was placed on the predictability of human conduct once achieved, even within a narrow compass. 457 01:02:21,540 --> 01:02:29,520 Predictability could become addictive as our own epoch of self-avowed control freaks hardly needs to be told. 458 01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:34,050 Small successes feed vaulting ambitions. 459 01:02:34,050 --> 01:02:44,160 The promise held out by both the first and second waves of Rumania was to overthrow the empire of Trouts. 460 01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:53,490 Fortuna had reigned mighty in the imaginations of the authors of that first wave of rule books I mentioned. 461 01:02:53,490 --> 01:02:57,810 Here we see her with her emblem out of the wheel. 462 01:02:57,810 --> 01:03:01,950 Now you're up. Tomorrow you'll be down. And the fragile bubble. 463 01:03:01,950 --> 01:03:12,630 And, of course, a venturesome ship going off to sea with uncertain outcome the SEC rules aim to anticipate. 464 01:03:12,630 --> 01:03:25,200 The Russa's of Fortuna, by building variability into their very formulation, the thin rules aim to defeat Fortuna once and for all. 465 01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:35,010 Giving her no quarter. So let me conclude these two episodes from the history of Rules of Romania, the thick, 466 01:03:35,010 --> 01:03:40,410 supple rules of the early modern arts and the third rigid rules of 18th century Paris 467 01:03:40,410 --> 01:03:50,300 police highlight a contrast between two very different visions of what a rule can be. 468 01:03:50,300 --> 01:04:01,190 For practitioners of the mechanical arts like Dura and many other early modern authors of books that reduced practise to an art rules were flexible, 469 01:04:01,190 --> 01:04:06,800 necessarily so whether the subject was carpentry, cookery or siege warfare. 470 01:04:06,800 --> 01:04:13,760 Unexpected particulars might at any moment ambush the universal rule. 471 01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:23,170 In contrast. The rules on regulations ordained for 18th century Paris. 472 01:04:23,170 --> 01:04:27,490 This is once again guilt imagining what it would be like to have regular facades, 473 01:04:27,490 --> 01:04:36,220 house facades in Paris all facing the same way for these for these rules. 474 01:04:36,220 --> 01:04:42,850 A rule has to be rigid, and it has to be freestanding for the lieutenant of the Paris police. 475 01:04:42,850 --> 01:04:49,420 A rigid rule expressed a bureaucratic ideal in which regulations foresaw all 476 01:04:49,420 --> 01:04:57,010 eventualities and were obeyed as automatically as a driver today stops at a red light. 477 01:04:57,010 --> 01:05:02,200 This vision of a perfect rule goes hand-in-hand with a vision of a perfect order in 478 01:05:02,200 --> 01:05:08,470 which Parisians never invent a new way of evading prohibitions against lace and games, 479 01:05:08,470 --> 01:05:14,200 or if they do, the tight web of police surveillance will catch them in the act. 480 01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:19,960 All of the rule makers knew all too well this was not the world in which they lived. 481 01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:30,340 The sheer number of times that the Parisian ordinances were reissued and the increasingly hysterical tone of their Prologis speak volumes 482 01:05:30,340 --> 01:05:41,170 about what historian Annette FAJ has described as the stubborn resistance of the people of Paris to new regulations and unwavering attention, 483 01:05:41,170 --> 01:05:48,850 vigilance and judgement on the part of the police inspectors made up for the failure of the thin 484 01:05:48,850 --> 01:05:58,090 rules like the return of the repressed Aristotle's ancient problems of universals and particulars, 485 01:05:58,090 --> 01:06:05,260 and the seasoned judgement needed to cope with particulars crept in through the back door. 486 01:06:05,260 --> 01:06:14,770 If these examples put you in mind of the thousands of human invigilators hired by Facebook to patrol 487 01:06:14,770 --> 01:06:22,360 paste postings of unsavoury content that the algorithms were supposed to eliminate automatically, 488 01:06:22,360 --> 01:06:29,260 your associations would not be amiss. The dream of the perfect rule In this case, 489 01:06:29,260 --> 01:06:38,410 the algorithms developed by the Facebook programmers has not relinquished its grasp on the imagination of the rule makers. 490 01:06:38,410 --> 01:06:43,480 On the contrary, the dream has turned febrile and contagious. 491 01:06:43,480 --> 01:06:53,860 Those ubiquitous utopias and dystopias of algorithms for everything from stocking your fridge to finding your mate to writing your next book. 492 01:06:53,860 --> 01:07:04,060 My point is not that digitalisation should somehow be minimised as something less than a revolution. 493 01:07:04,060 --> 01:07:10,420 I do think it is a revolution comparable to the print revolution of the early modern period. 494 01:07:10,420 --> 01:07:21,250 My point is rather that there's nothing new about the dream of a perfect rule all encompassing in its scope and merely automatic in its execution. 495 01:07:21,250 --> 01:07:32,290 No historian can resist a delusion that refuses to die, no matter how often it is buried with a stake through its heart. 496 01:07:32,290 --> 01:07:36,580 Why just the dream of the perfect rule endure? 497 01:07:36,580 --> 01:07:45,040 It's worth noting that although this dream is long lived, it is not eternal, nor is it necessary outside of logic, 498 01:07:45,040 --> 01:07:55,000 it's very difficult to find examples before the 17th century, even in the mathematical disciplines of these kinds of rules. 499 01:07:55,000 --> 01:08:03,790 But already in the early 18th century, especially in the context of modernising cities, aspirations rise. 500 01:08:03,790 --> 01:08:07,900 A girl policed city is not simply a safe city. 501 01:08:07,900 --> 01:08:13,210 It is an orderly city in which the streets are broad and straight. 502 01:08:13,210 --> 01:08:17,740 The houses are numbered and all face the same way. 503 01:08:17,740 --> 01:08:21,220 The night blazes with a thousand lanterns. 504 01:08:21,220 --> 01:08:30,670 There's a fire department that arrives on time, carriages are licenced and the carriage drivers no longer menace pedestrians. 505 01:08:30,670 --> 01:08:36,610 Residents dispose of their trash at the appointed time and place. 506 01:08:36,610 --> 01:08:47,800 It took almost 200 years for Parisians to internalise these norms, and these norms were always fragile as repeated street uprisings testify. 507 01:08:47,800 --> 01:08:57,880 What's important for my purposes is that partial success nourished hopes of complete success. 508 01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:06,640 It was the relative orderliness of early 18th century Paris with its first broad boulevards, 509 01:09:06,640 --> 01:09:16,530 as opposed to the spaghetti tangle of mediaeval streets that encouraged Quiet and his fellow police officers to press for more regulations. 510 01:09:16,530 --> 01:09:20,190 Of more aspects of urban life, in short. 511 01:09:20,190 --> 01:09:31,320 Promises made on behalf of the perfect rule were backward rather than forward looking like the algorithms that emerged from machine learning. 512 01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:36,510 They extrapolate from the known past to the unknown future. 513 01:09:36,510 --> 01:09:44,580 And just like past dreams of perfect rules, they do so from highly selective examples of the known past. 514 01:09:44,580 --> 01:09:54,660 Those parts, which are the most regular, the most stable, the parts that offer most encouragement to the vision of the perfectly orderly, 515 01:09:54,660 --> 01:10:02,130 perfectly stable, perfectly transparent world required for perfect rules to work. 516 01:10:02,130 --> 01:10:11,400 Under these circumstances, it's not surprising. Projects for perfect rules should fail with such dismal regularity. 517 01:10:11,400 --> 01:10:18,810 What cries out for explanation is their emergence and, above all, their astonishing persistence. 518 01:10:18,810 --> 01:10:29,310 The historical conditions under which such dreams first emerged offers us a clue in certain pockets of the world. 519 01:10:29,310 --> 01:10:38,370 Few, but prominent life really was slowly and fitfully becoming more predictable. 520 01:10:38,370 --> 01:10:48,870 The Parisian police visionary quiet effectively believed that he had solved Aristotle's problem of fitting universal rules to particulars. 521 01:10:48,870 --> 01:10:58,560 He didn't succeed, not by a long shot, but partial success in this context and others was enough to keep the dream alive until today, 522 01:10:58,560 --> 01:11:07,500 where it has been rekindled by machine learning. The visionaries of machine learning effectively believed that they can solve another 523 01:11:07,500 --> 01:11:13,530 philosophical problem Hume's problem of induction for the algorithms to work. 524 01:11:13,530 --> 01:11:23,940 The future must, in a strong sense, be like the past. It is the temporal version of Aristotle's problem of universals. 525 01:11:23,940 --> 01:11:33,690 David Hume spent most of his own life in some of these pockets of partial regularity Edinburgh and Paris. 526 01:11:33,690 --> 01:11:43,590 And since David Hume, it's been axiomatic that induction assumes that tomorrow will be like today and yesterday. 527 01:11:43,590 --> 01:11:49,350 Hume's problem makes the contingency of induction explicit. 528 01:11:49,350 --> 01:11:57,840 My aim has been to show that historical contingencies can alter even what a rule is. 529 01:11:57,840 --> 01:12:06,990 The history of the dream of the thin rule the perfect rule suggests that, like Aristotle's universals, 530 01:12:06,990 --> 01:12:14,460 even the axioms of induction might hold only under certain historical conditions. 531 01:12:14,460 --> 01:12:19,740 Thank you for your attention.