James
Franklin.
The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability
before
Pascal.
Baltimore, Johns
Hopkins U.P., 2002.
512pp.
Paperback ISBN
0801871093.
Publisher's
recommended price $22.50
Paperback
reissue
of a book first published in 2000.
Before
Pascal
and Fermat's discovery of the mathematics of probability in 1654, how
did
we make reliable predictions? What methods in law, science, commerce,
philosophy,
and logic helped us to get at the truth in cases where certainty was
not
attainable? In The Science of Conjecture, James Franklin
examines
how judges, witch inquisitors, and juries evaluated evidence;
scientists
weighed reasons for and against scientific theories; and merchants
counted
shipwrecks to determine insurance rates. Sometimes this type of
reasoning
avoided numbers entirely, as in the legal standard of "proof beyond a
reasonable
doubt"; at other times it involved rough numerical estimates, as in
gambling
odds or the level of risk in chance events.
The
Science
of Conjecture provides a history of rational methods of dealing
with
uncertainty. Everyone can take a rough account of risk, Franklin
argues,
but understanding the principles of probability and using them to
improve
performance poses serious problems, the solution to which we have only
learned over many generations and after much trial and error. This
study
explores the coming to consciousness of the human understanding of risk.
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