Some Historical Remarks on the Baconian Conception of Probability
Some Historical Remarks on the Baconian Conception of Probability
复制标题
关于培根概率概念的一些历史评论
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
1980
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
L. Jonathan Cohen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
L. Jonathan Cohen
根据伊恩·哈金（Ian Hacking）的说法，弗朗西斯·培根“不关心概率”，“也不打算在不确定的情况下进行推理”。[2]我认为这是一个重大的错误，尽管这样的错误在哈金这本引人入胜的书中是很少见的。事实上，培根和后来受他影响的作家都非常关注概率，尽管他们并不关注根据数学演算构建的概率。我将把后者称为“帕斯卡概率”，以纪念这一领域的一位伟大的数学先驱;我的目的不仅是要证明培根自己对非帕斯卡概率的关注，而且还要证明至少从17世纪一直延续到19世纪的关于这种概率的哲学或方法论思考的一长串存在。
According to Ian Hacking, Francis Bacon had “no concern with probability” and “does not aim at inference under uncertainty.”2 I believe this to be an important mistake, though such mistakes are rare in Hacking’s fascinating book. In fact Bacon, and later writers influenced by him, were very much concerned with probabilities, though not with probabilities structured in accordance with the mathematical calculus of chance. I shall call the latter “Pascalian probabilities,” in tribute to one of the great mathematical pioneers in this area; and my object will be to demonstrate not only Bacon’s own concern with a non-Pascalian probability, but also the existence of a long line of philosophical or methodological reflections about such a probability, stretching at least from the seventeenth into the nineteenth century.