Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. The Empire of Chance
  • Cited by 630
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      05 December 2013
      13 April 1989
      ISBN:
      9780511720482
      9780521398381
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720482
      Dimensions:
      Weight & Pages:
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 153 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.56kg, 360 Pages
      • Subjects:
      History of Ideas, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
      Series:
      Ideas in Context (12)
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    History of Ideas, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
    Series:
    Ideas in Context (12)
    Information

    Book description

    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.

    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.’

    Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.