The Logic of Chance: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, with Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science

כריכה קדמית
Macmillan, 1866 - 370 עמודים

מתוך הספר

מהדורות אחרות - הצג הכל

מונחים וביטויים נפוצים

קטעים בולטים

עמוד 8 - Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life...
עמוד 309 - It is seldom, if ever, between a consequent and a single antecedent, that this invariable sequence subsists. It is usually between a consequent and the sum of several antecedents; the concurrence of all of them being requisite to produce, that is, to be certain of being followed by, the consequent. In such cases it is very common to single out one only of the antecedents under the denomination of Cause, calling the others merely Conditions.
עמוד 126 - There is a very strong presumption against common speculative truths, and against the most ordinary facts, before the proof of them; which yet is overcome by almost any proof.
עמוד 340 - The science of human nature is of this description. It falls far short of the standard of exactness now realized in Astronomy; but there is no reason that it should not be as much a science as Tidology is, or as Astronomy was when its calculations had only mastered the maiu phenomena, but not the perturbations.
עמוד 310 - The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.
עמוד 350 - In a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life. This is the general law; and the special question as to who shall commit the crime depends of course upon special laws; which, however, in their total action, must obey the large social law to which they are subordinate. And the power of the larger law is so irresistible, that neither the love of life nor the fear of another world can avail anything towards even checking its operation.
עמוד 349 - These being the peculiarities of this singular crime, it is surely an astonishing fact, that all the evidence we possess respecting it points to one great conclusion, and can leave no doubt on our minds that suicide is merely the product of the general condition of society, and that the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circumstances.
עמוד 321 - Though there be no such thing as chance in the world, our ignorance of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding and begets a like species of belief or opinion.
עמוד 88 - were to determine to play for their whole property, what would be the effect of this agreement ? The one would only double his fortune, and the other reduce his to naught. What proportion is there between the loss and the gain ? The same that there is between all and nothing. The gain of the one is but a moderate sum ; the loss of the other is numerically infinite, and morally so great that the labor of his whole life may not, perhaps, suffice to restore his property.
עמוד 10 - But this uniformity has risen probably from zero ; after various and very great fluctuations seems tending towards zero again ; and may, for anything we know, undergo still greater fluctuations in future. Now these examples I consider to be only extreme ones, and not such very extreme ones, of what is the almost universal rule in nature. I shall endeavour to show that even the few apparent exceptions, such as the proportions between male and female births, &c., may not be, and probably in reality...

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