The Emergence of Probability
by Ian Hacking · first published 1975
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"Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. Ian Hacking here presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about probability, induction and statistical inference and the growth of this new family of ideas in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contemporary debates center around figures such as Pascal, Leibniz and Jacques Bernoulli."--Jacket.
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Just wanted to flag that the works of Ian Hacking, especially The Emergence of Probability (1975) and The Taming of Chance (1990) are excellent on this. Dense and challenging at times but also well written and the product of a very original mind. The latter book has a Wikipedia page with some…
on “A Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory” ↗…book, fairly mathematical: https://archive.org/details/ofmathemahistory00todhrich Ian Hacking has two books, he is a philosopher, accordingly they have a broader outlook: "The Taming of Chance" "The Emergence of Probability" Stephen Stigler's "The History of Statistics" seems to be the most popular history of statistics.
on “Ask HN: Good long form presentation of the history of probability theory” ↗…a mathematics for probability started to emerge. With the emergence of the laws of large numbers, this mathematics could be linked to observable real-world occurrence rates. (Ian Hacking's book "The Emergence of Probability" is a standard reference, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2184357?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...) Suppose you were confronted with a stream of random numbers, and no intellectual or mathematical framework for…
on “Peculiar pattern found in 'random' prime numbers” ↗