Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:27:22.520Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Stuart Mill, John Herschel, and the ‘Probability of Causes’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

John V. Strong
John V. Strong*
Affiliation:
Boston College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Any discussion of probability theory in early nineteenth-century Britain requires a specially vigorous exercise of the historical imagination. A century of subsequent thought about the foundations of the subject has made both historians and philosophers of science only too aware of how elusive and polyvalent a term ‘probability’ is; indeed, since Carnap, it has scarcely been possible to use the word without a qualifying adjective or subscript. Before the nineteenth century, on the other hand, during the ‘emergence’ of formalized probabilistic thinking, writers from Pascal and Fermat onwards were keenly conscious that the concept they used was often ill-defined and equivocally employed.

There is a sensation, therefore, of sailing unexpectedly into a patch of flat calm when one turns to such early Victorian writers (I use the term in its common, extended sense to refer to the period from around 1830 till the middle of the century) as Lubbock, Drinkwater-Bethune, Galloway, and, above all, De Morgan.

Type
Part I. History of Philosophy of Science
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 31 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I wish to thank Larry Laudan for his continuing advice and encouragement in the larger research project of which this essay forms a part. I am also grateful to the library staff at The Royal Society, London, for their kind assistance in examining the Herschel Papers deposited there.

References

Baker, K.M. Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Blake, R.M., Ducasse, Curt J. and Madden, E.H. Theories of Scientific Method: The Renaissance Through the Nineteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Bernoulli, D. “Recherches physiques et astronomiques….” In Pièces qui ont remporté le prix double de l'Adadémie royale des sciences en MDCCXXXIV. Paris: Imprimérie royale, 1735. Pages 93–122.Google Scholar
Boole, G. An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. London: Macmillan, 1854.Google Scholar
Cannon, W.F. “John Herschel and the Idea of Science.” Journal of the History of Ideas 22(1961): 215–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnap, R. Logical Foundations of Probability. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A. “Quetelet on Probabilities.” Quarterly Journal of Education IV(1832): 101–110.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A. “Theory of Probabilities.” In Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. London: B. Fellowes, 1817-1845.Google Scholar
De Morgan, A. An Essay on Probabilities. London: Longman and Taylor, 1838.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. “Equipossibility Theories of Probability.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 22(1971) : 339–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, I. The Emergence of Probability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Herschel, J.F.W. Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857.Google Scholar
Jevons, W.S. The Principles of Science. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1874.Google Scholar
Keynes, J.M. A Treatise on Probability. London: Macmillan, 1921.Google Scholar
Lacroix, S.F. Traité élémentaire du calcul des probabilités. 2ème éd. Paris: Bachelier, 1822.Google Scholar
Laplace, P.S. Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités. (Included as the “Introduction” to [17]. Pages V-CLXIX. English translation: A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities. (trans.) Truscott, F.W. and Emory, F.L.. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1902. Reprint by Dover, 1951.)Google Scholar
Laplace, P.S. Théorie Analytique des Probabilités. 3rd edition. (1820). In Oeuvres de Laplace, Volume VII. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1878-1912.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. “The Sources of Modern Methodology.” In Historical and Philosophical Dimensions of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. (University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, Volume 12.) Edited by Butts, R.E. and Hintikka, J. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1977. Pages 3–19.Google Scholar
Mill, J.S. Autobiography. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957. (Originally published 1873.)Google Scholar
Mill, J.S. The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848. 2 volumes. Edited by Mineka, F.E.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, J.S. A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive. Volumes 7 and 8 of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Edited by Robson, J.M. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Olson, R. Scottish Philosophy and British Physics 1750-1880. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Quetelet, A. Instructions populaires sur le calcul des probabilités. Bruxelles: Tarlier et Hayez, 1828.Google Scholar
Quetelet, A. Lettres…sur la théorie des probabilités. Bruxelles: Hayez, 1846.Google Scholar
Quetelet, A. Letters…on the Theory of Probabilities. (trans.) Downes, O.G.. London: Layton, 1849. (A translation of [24].)Google Scholar
Ramsey, F.P. “Truth and Probability.” In The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays. (ed.) Braithwaite, R.B.. Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, & Co., 1960. Pages 156–211.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre. Leiden: Sijthoff, 1935. (Translated and revised as The Theory of Probability. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949.)Google Scholar
Stewart, D. The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart. Edited by Sir William Hamilton. Farnborough: Gregg International, 1971. (A reprint of the Edinburgh edition of 1854-1860.)Google Scholar
Strong, J.V. “The Infinite Ballot Box of Nature: De Morgan, Boole, and Jevons on Probability and the Logic of Induction.” In PSA 1976, Volume 1. Edited by Suppe, F. and Asquith, P.D.. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, 1976. Pages 197–211.Google Scholar
Todhunter, I. A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability. London and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1865.Google Scholar
Venn, J. The Logic of Chance. London and Cambridge: Macmillan, 1866.Google Scholar