A note on equiprobability prior to 1500

Mark Nicholas Andrew Thakkar*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Rudolf Schuessler has argued that sixteenth-century thinkers developed a concept of equal probability that was virtually absent before 1500 and that may have contributed to the birth of mathematical probability shortly after 1650. This note uses additional textual evidence to argue that the concept of equal probability was in fact generally available to medieval thinkers. It is true that ascriptions of equal probability are comparatively rare in medieval texts, but this can be explained without positing a conceptual blind spot.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)225-231
Number of pages7
JournalEarly Science and Medicine
Volume27
Issue number2
Early online date16 Jun 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2022

Keywords

  • History of probability
  • Probable opinion
  • Scholasticism
  • Medieval
  • Latin

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