[language] The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and ProbabilityBefore Pascal]

H.M. Hubey hubeyh at mail.montclair.edu
Wed Jun 12 11:45:05 UTC 2002


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Journa of the American Medical Association
Table of Contents - June 12, 2002
Vol 287, No. 22 pp - 2899-3034
http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v287n22/toc.html

Books/History, Probability

The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal
by James Franklin, 497 pp, $55, ISBN 0-8018-6569-7, Baltimore, Md, The
Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Reviewed by
Frederick Butzen

In The Science of Conjecture, James Franklin, senior lecturer in
mathematics at
the University of New South Wales, tells the story of how people thought
about
evidence and likelihood in the years before Pascal and Fermat discovered
how to
compute probability. Because there are few areas of life in which people
do not
weigh likelihood and ponder evidence, The Science of Conjecture explores
many
out-of-the-way placesfrom astronomy to witch trials, from religious
redemption
to maritime insurance. Through them all, Franklin shows how thought
sharpened
over the centuries, to the point where Pascal and Fermat could raise the
measurement of likelihood from an art to a science.

Full text
http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v287n22/ffull/jbk0612-1.html

The Science of Conjecture : Evidence and Probability Before Pascal
by James Franklin
Hardcover: 600 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.32 x 9.70 x 6.38
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801865697; (June 2001)
AMAZON - US
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801865697/darwinanddarwini/
AMAZON - UK
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801865697/humannaturecom/

>From Book News, Inc.
This book examines the history of rational methods of dealing with
uncertainty
and the historically developed consciousness of risk. It thus provides
an
analysis of the foundations of modern scientific inquiry. Franklin
(mathematics, University of New South Wales) considers how renaissance
judges,
Catholic inquisitors, and juries evaluated evidence, how scientists
weighed the
reasons for and against particular theories, and how merchants counted
shipwrecks to calculate insurance rates.Book News, Inc.®, Portland, OR

Â-Stephen Stigler, University of Chicago, author of The History of
Statistics:
The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900
"...An extraordinary work, a clearly written history of the ideas of
evidence
and of uncertainty before Pascal."

Book Description
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 is an immense task-a task that had to be learned over human
history, just as we had to train ourselves to become aware of the
principles of
perspective. The theme of this study is the coming to consciousness of
human
understanding of risk.

A well-reasoned and highly readable study, The Science of Conjecture
makes an
important contribution to intellectual history and the history of
science.

About the Author
James Franklin is a senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of
New
South Wales.

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