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Ideas in Context
The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life
This book tells how quantitative ideas of chance have transformed the natural and social sciences as well as everyday life over the past 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 on biology, physics, and psychology. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centers on how these technical innovations recreated our conceptions of nature, mind, and society.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Gerd Gigerenzer
38 books284 followersGerd Gigerenzer is a German psychologist who has studied the use of bounded rationality and heuristics in decision making, especially in medicine. A critic of the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, he argues that heuristics should not lead us to conceive of human thinking as riddled with irrational cognitive biases, but rather to conceive rationality as an adaptive tool that is not identical to the rules of formal logic or the probability calculus.
Gerd Gigerenzer ist ein deutscher Psychologe und seit 1997 Direktor der Abteilung „Adaptives Verhalten und Kognition“ und seit 2009 Direktor des Harding-Zentrum für Risikokompetenz, beide am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Berlin. Er ist mit Lorraine Daston verheiratet.
Gigerenzer arbeitet über begrenzte Rationalität, Heuristiken und einfache Entscheidungsbäume, das heißt über die Frage, wie man rationale Entscheidungen treffen kann, wenn Zeit und Information begrenzt und die Zukunft ungewiss ist (siehe auch Entscheidung unter Ungewissheit). Der breiten Öffentlichkeit ist er mit seinem Buch Bauchentscheidungen, bekannt geworden; dieses Buch wurde in 17 Sprachen übersetzt und veröffentlicht.
[English bio taken from English Wikipedia article]
[Deutsche Autorenbeschreibung aus dem deutschen Wikipedia-Artikel übernommen]
Gerd Gigerenzer ist ein deutscher Psychologe und seit 1997 Direktor der Abteilung „Adaptives Verhalten und Kognition“ und seit 2009 Direktor des Harding-Zentrum für Risikokompetenz, beide am Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Berlin. Er ist mit Lorraine Daston verheiratet.
Gigerenzer arbeitet über begrenzte Rationalität, Heuristiken und einfache Entscheidungsbäume, das heißt über die Frage, wie man rationale Entscheidungen treffen kann, wenn Zeit und Information begrenzt und die Zukunft ungewiss ist (siehe auch Entscheidung unter Ungewissheit). Der breiten Öffentlichkeit ist er mit seinem Buch Bauchentscheidungen, bekannt geworden; dieses Buch wurde in 17 Sprachen übersetzt und veröffentlicht.
[English bio taken from English Wikipedia article]
[Deutsche Autorenbeschreibung aus dem deutschen Wikipedia-Artikel übernommen]
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 14, 2020
A landmark intellectual history & genealogy of probability theory (& practice), as it developed in mathematics, philosophy, science & industry from the mid-17th century to publication in 1989.
(For an account of probabilistic antecedents, I have started The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal)
The book is so rich & pithy that adequate summation seems impossible. My first taste of this fact came when I underlined & annotated initial sections so extensively that I considered just bracketing the few non-essential passages instead. I then wrote out my notes for the Introduction & Chapter 1, which amounted to a 32-minute read by Medium's estimation, cementing this reality in my mind.
Here is the authors' own high-level summary, but suffice to say that it was probably the richest, most rewarding book-length nonfiction reading I've done in years. (Obviously contingent on an inherent interest in the subject, or at least adjacent topics in the history & philosophy of science). It's an intensely readable & digestible account, but not necessarily concise, as it tends toward redundancy & extraneous narrative (which can be helpful, depending on your learning style).
I was primarily concerned with the high-level conceptual arc of probability as a body of theory & practice, so initially skipped detailed sections on its history in physics, biology & psychology. I went back & (ponderously) read those also, which definitely adds to the richness but is likely not strictly necessary.
I'll need to spend substantially more time mapping out my notes & sensemaking in Roam, but the overarching concepts that stuck with me are:
- the evolving, somewhat confounding conception of probability via its complex relationship with ideas of chance, randomness & determinism (see my initial notes)
- the alternating primacy of averages, regularities & aggregates vs variances, outliers & individuals/specificity.
- a similar swing between probability as subservient to the intuitions of 'reasonable men [sic]', vs probability as the very definition of normative rationality (an insight still being relearned today)
- probability as a body of theory defined (& continually redefined) primarily via its practical applications (as opposed to an abstract branch of pure math)
(For an account of probabilistic antecedents, I have started The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal)
The book is so rich & pithy that adequate summation seems impossible. My first taste of this fact came when I underlined & annotated initial sections so extensively that I considered just bracketing the few non-essential passages instead. I then wrote out my notes for the Introduction & Chapter 1, which amounted to a 32-minute read by Medium's estimation, cementing this reality in my mind.
Here is the authors' own high-level summary, but suffice to say that it was probably the richest, most rewarding book-length nonfiction reading I've done in years. (Obviously contingent on an inherent interest in the subject, or at least adjacent topics in the history & philosophy of science). It's an intensely readable & digestible account, but not necessarily concise, as it tends toward redundancy & extraneous narrative (which can be helpful, depending on your learning style).
1. We begin with two historical chapters that describe the origins and development of probability and statistics from the mid-seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Here we introduce changing interpretations of the probability calculus, changing attitudes towards determinism, changing conceptions of averages and errors – all, again, in the context of changing applications.
2. In each of the subsequent four chapters, we focus on one area of broad application: experimental methodology, biology, physics, and psychology.
3. With chapter 7, we leave the sciences to assess the impact of probability and statistics on daily life, from weather reports to mammography.
4. Finally, we survey, from something like the victorious general’s hilltop, the territory we have covered.
I was primarily concerned with the high-level conceptual arc of probability as a body of theory & practice, so initially skipped detailed sections on its history in physics, biology & psychology. I went back & (ponderously) read those also, which definitely adds to the richness but is likely not strictly necessary.
I'll need to spend substantially more time mapping out my notes & sensemaking in Roam, but the overarching concepts that stuck with me are:
- the evolving, somewhat confounding conception of probability via its complex relationship with ideas of chance, randomness & determinism (see my initial notes)
- the alternating primacy of averages, regularities & aggregates vs variances, outliers & individuals/specificity.
- a similar swing between probability as subservient to the intuitions of 'reasonable men [sic]', vs probability as the very definition of normative rationality (an insight still being relearned today)
- probability as a body of theory defined (& continually redefined) primarily via its practical applications (as opposed to an abstract branch of pure math)
July 11, 2009
I use it alot !
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews