Review: The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal
| Author | James Gordley |
| DOI | 10.1177/136571270200600305 |
| Published date | 01 July 2002 |
| Date | 01 July 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
James Franklin
THE SCIENCE OF CONJECTURE: EVIDENCE AND PROBABILITY BEFORE
PASCAL
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (2001) 500 pp, hb $59.95, pb
$22.50
In 1654, Pascal and Fermat developed a mathematical theory of probability.
Franklin examines how, before then. people discovered principles to deal
rationally with uncertainty. These principles were formulated with increasing
sophistication over the centuries. This is a ‘Whig history’, Franklin himself
observes. in which a new idea catches on ‘because it is a better idea’ (p. 321). For
example, medieval civil lawyers thought more seriously than Roman jurists about
the weight to be given to certain kinds of evidence. Early on, they described the
su-called ‘half-proof
:
evidence insufficient by itself to convict. but sufficient when
supplemented (pp. 15-20).
By
the end of the 14th century, jurists had distinguished
with precision the concepts of ‘suspicion’. ‘simple presumptions’, ‘presumptions
of law’, ‘indications’ of truth of varying strength, and ‘conjectures’ (pp. 30-1).
Medieval canon lawyers identified risk as one reason why a merchant might
legitimately raise his price (pp. 259-61). By the 16th century, theologian-jurists-
now
known
as the late scholastics-had developed a sophisticated analysis of how
risks should be priced in insurance contracts and games of chance (pp.
285-8).
For Franklin. these and similar discoveries were not mere anticipations of later
mathematical theory, inadequate because they used words to deal with matters
that are better handled with numbers. Much
of
the time, people confront
uncertainty
in
situations in which neither mathematics nor deductive logic are
helpful. That is
so
even in the hard sciences: for example, in deciding whether
the weight of the evidence favours the steady state
or
the big bang theory of the
origin of the universe. The writers before Pascal understood, better than many of
our contemporaries, how to deal with such situations rationally.
It is hard to know what to admire most about this book its scope, its method,
or
what it has to teach us. In scope it resembles Arthur Lovejoy’s classic,
The
Great
Chain
of
Being.
Three chapters deal with the law of evidence; another with the
theological problem of what to do when one’s conscience is in doubt:
two
more
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF
EVIDENCE
&
PROOF
191
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