The Matter of Chance

by D. H. Mellor

• ISBN13: 9780521615983
• ISBN10: 0521615984
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Statistical techniques and theories have become widely applied in the physical, biological and social sciences. The enormous increase in their scope and complexity has led to much philosophical discussion of their significance, and of the meaning in non-mathematical terms of the methods and concepts they employ. This book deals not so much with statistical methods as with the central concept of chance, or statistical probability, which statistical theories apply to nature. Examples range from the chance of a tossed coin falling heads to that of a man dying or a radioactive atom decaying in a fixed period of time. Chances seem, however, to be peculiar properties, and to belong to peculiar entitles, to events rather than to things.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	xi
The limits of personalism	1	(26)
Measuring partial belief	27	(23)
Frequencies and trials	50	(13)
Propensity	63	(20)
Half lives and the force of mortality	83	(18)
Imprecision and inexactness	101	(21)
Connectivity and classical propensities	122	(29)
Determinism and laws of nature	151	(24)
Apology	175	(1)
References	176	(11)
Index	187