If the title of this book seems daunting to you, well, then, your instincts are sound. This is not a book for the faint of heart. However, if you're up for an amazing intellectual trek through the high-country (and some low country) of the mind, then you'll find this book a genuinely rewarding experience. I came to the book via a recommendation from Nassim Taleb, and the praise that Taleb expressed for the book proved more than accurate.
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| Author James Franklin |
Author James Franklin is an Australian mathematician-philosopher, but this description sells him short. The breadth of learning displayed in this volume is truly astonishing. Reading it, you might guess him a linguist, a lawyer, a rhetorician, a medievalist, a scientist, and so on. As the title lets you know, his topics are broad--"evidence" and "probability"--and his account runs from the dawn of Western civ in Egypt and Mesopotamia up to the early modern period of Pascal. (Would that someone write a similar history of Indian and Chinese thought!) Pascal, along with Fermat and Huygens, and a few lesser-known figures, marked a change in thinking about probability when they developed mathematical models and algorithms for calculating the odds (probabilities) involved in stochastic games of chance, such as dice. But as Franklin notes from the beginning of this book, most thinking about probability throughout Western history, including the period after Pascal, addresses probability (and chance) by the use of ordinary language. We see this demonstrated in terms such as "more likely than not," "a preponderance of the evidence," and "beyond reasonable doubt" to give examples of common phrases still used today by lawyers, judges, and juries.
Franklin traces ideas about evidence and probability through the domain of law, which proves the most significant domain for delineating issues of evidence in general and probabilities in particular. But Franklin also addresses developments about these topics in rhetoric, philosophy, theology, moral theology and philosophy (such as the casuistry of the Jesuits), insurance and business law, and natural science. Thinking about issues of evidence and probability has its roots in Greek and Roman thought, but perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that medieval thought and practice analyzed and advanced these concepts greatly. Franklin argues adamantly against many calumnies hurled against medieval thought by modern critics. Many post-classical, pre-Renaissance thinkers receive attention and implicit praise from Franklin for their groundbreaking insights: names like Baldus, Orseme, Duns Scotus, Buridan, Ockham, John of Salisbury, and Nicholas of Autrecourt, and so on. Many of these thinkers and sources were new or only vaguely familiar to me.
There are times, I must admit, when I found the going a bit slow, although only in the relatively small section on Pascal and his peers did Franklin delve much into math as such. However, I'm quick to forgive Franklin for going a bit deep into the weeds at some points because of the importance of his overall message. Indeed, if you're pressed for time or just want to dip your toe in the get the feel, just read his prefaces (original and 2015), Conclusion, and Epilogue and you will have received a valuable reward for your time. Issues of evidence and the challenge of probabilities are as important and vital to our well-being today as they have been at any time throughout history. Indeed, given the extraordinary human powers that now threaten the entire planet and the continued well-being and survival of humankind as a species, we'd do well to do all we can to educate ourselves about these principles and thereby promote sound decision-making involving issues of evidence and probability. These terms were a part of my everyday concerns as a lawyer who practiced before trial and appellate courts (and administrative tribunals). But issues of evidence and probability have application quite as much (albeit less explicitly so) in our everyday lives. We experience these issues as individuals and as members of groups, for instance, as members of political entities that make decisions that affect our well-being from the level of our neighborhoods to the level of our nation and even now involving our entire world. For instance, we see these issues raised and discussed in great depth and with great concern in our thinking about how to best address climate change,.
Conclusion: The Science of Conjecture is quite an amazing book as a work of scholarship and as a prompt to thought. I would compare in its comprehensiveness and depth to Thomas McEllivey's The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. High praise indeed!
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