James Franklin
The Science of Conjecture:
Evidence and Probability Before Pascal.
Johns Hopkins University Press,
485 pages, $55
What do we know, and how surely do we know it? The general
answer was given by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics:
certainty can be found only in mathematics, all other knowledge
being to some degree doubtful. Much evil has been let loose upon
the world by defiance of, or exaggeration of, this simple truth:
at the one extreme by the belief that absolute certainty can be
found in non-mathematical dogmas, at the other by the vulgar
conclusion that since certainty is not possible outside
mathematics (nor even inside it, according to a few bold
theorists), everything we think we know is really just a set of
epiphenomenal delusions arising from our personal and social
circumstances. The natural fruit of the first of these errors is
obscurantist tyranny; of the second, that mendacious solipsism
Americans have come to know so intimately well, according to
which, since nothing can be known, language has no content and no
purpose but the manipulation of the world for the gratification
of our private appetites.
We shall eventually find out, since
it has colonized a large part of our academic life and seems
still to be increasing its hold on the minds of the intelligent
young,
