Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:18:11.248Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Appendix 1 - Sources for Chapter 2

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Get access

Summary

My description of the development of probability theory from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries relies chiefly on secondary sources. Many of these were published in the last fifteen years. The literature of the history and philosophy of probability, though extremely rich, is still of manageable size.

Ian Hacking, in The Emergence of Probability: a Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), describes how ideas of chance events and uncertain knowledge were blended during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a single theory of mathematical probability. In Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), Lorraine Daston examines the transformation of the classical calculus during the eighteenth century from a theory of games of chance to a model of rational thought. The new doctrine of chances was applied not only to the numerical uncertainty of insurance premiums or astronomical observations, but to matters of judgment in law, politics, and the moral sciences.

The nineteenth century is covered in Hacking's The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), and Theodore Porter's The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Hacking argues that statistical and probabilistic methods were seen as granting a degree of predictability and control to the chaos of human behavior when applied in the social sphere during the early part of the century, but as undermining the doctrine of determinism when applied to the physical sciences towards the end.

Type
Chapter
Information
Interpreting Probability
Controversies and Developments in the Early Twentieth Century
, pp. 231 - 234
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×