The Empire of Chance
How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life

Gerd Gigerenzer (Author), Zeno Swijtink (Author), Theodore Porter (Author), Lorraine Daston (Author), John Beatty (Author), Lorenz Kruger (Author)

9780521398381, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 October 1990

360 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 3 cm, 0.56 kg

'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

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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Classical probabilities, 1660–1840
2. Statistical probabilities, 1820–1900
3. The inference experts
4. Chance and life: controversies in modern biology
5. The probabilistic revolution in physics
6. Statistics of the mind
7. Numbers rule the world
8. The implications of chance
References
Name index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Philosophy of science [PDA], Mathematics & science [P], History of ideas [JFCX]