Rivka Galchen reviews Director Emerita Lorraine Daston’s book Rules: A Short History of What We Live By in her article Why Do We Obey Rules? Some last and some don’t, yet we cling to them in times of change published by The New Yorker.

Sumptuary laws, the Rule of St. Benedict, and even laws of nature are explored by Daston who traces the development of rules and order in the Western tradition and shows how rules have evolved from ancient to modern times.