• Acknowledgements; 1. The argument; 2. The doctrine of necessity; 3. Public amateurs, secret bureaucrats; 4. Bureaux; 5. The sweet despotism of reason; 6. The quantum of sickness; 7. The granary of science; 8. Suicide is a kind of madness; 9. The experimental basis of the philosophy of legislation; 10. Facts without authenticity, without detail, without control, and without value; 11. By what majority?; 12. The law of large numbers; 13. Regimental chests; 14. Society prepares the crimes; 15. The astronomical conception of society; 16. The mineralogical conception of society; 17. The most ancient nobility; 18. Cassirer's thesis; 19. The normal state; 20. As real as cosmic forces; 21. The autonomy of statistical law; 22. A chapter from Prussian statistics; 23. A universe of chance; Notes; Index.

"Hacking has an uncanny instinct for honing in upon some critical and novel feature of the past and showing how seemingly disparate facts fall into place once we grant him his central category. He does not pretend to make a complete survey of his topic. Again like an archaelogist, he respects the fragmentary record as one of the limitations of the trade. But what he digs up and deciphers never fails to engage and illuminate." Science