The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life: 12 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 12)

The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life: 12 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 12)

by JohnBeatty (Author), Gerd Gigerenzer (Author), ZenoSwijtink (Author), TheodorePorter (Author), Lorenz Kruger (Author), Lorraine Daston (Author), Gerd Gigerenzer (Author)

Synopsis

The Empire of Chance tells how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Themes recur - determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, the shifting meaning of probability - but in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists in the history and philosophy of science, but also at the general reader and scholars in other disciplines.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 360
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 08 Nov 1990

ISBN 10: 052139838X
ISBN 13: 9780521398381

Media Reviews
'The book provides a welcome introduction to the main historical themes of probability, statistics and inference. It is, at the same time, impressive in its range and subject-matter and in its depth of analysis.' The Times Higher Education Supplement