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Classical Probability in the Enlightenment
LORRAINE DASTON, 1988
Princeton, Princeton University Press
xviii+ 423 pp., US$19.95 (paperback)
ISBN 0-691-08497-1, 0-691-00644-X (paperback)
Lorraine Daston's Classical Probability in the Enlightenment reconstructs classical probabilists' attempts to define rationality by "reducing good sense to a calculus". Daston concentrates primarily on the French and English thinkers who sought between approximately 1650 and 1840 to develop a mathematical model which would descriptively quantify degrees of rational belief under conditions of uncertainty. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment can thus be broadly classified as an intellectual history. However, Daston's methodological approach to classical probability distinguishes her work from more standard intellectual histories in the Anglo-American historiographical tradition. Although Daston makes no specific reference to figures such as Gaston Bachelard or Georges Canguilhem in either her text or her bibliography, the reader familiar with these French sources will perhaps already be comfortable with her decision to discuss the classical theory of probability as a coherent set of conceptual categories whose contextualized interpretation determined its historical applications. The net result of Daston's novel methodology is a history of equally novel historical insight and analysis. Moreover, for anyone wary of methodological novelty in intellectual history, Daston's...