I grandi del pensiero · 1
Saggio filosofico sulle probabilità
Pierre-Simon Laplace · edited by Gregorio Galli · Italian edition
The book
What does it mean to reason when certainty is out of reach? In 1814 Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers of his age, answered this question with a book without formulas, written for anyone who wants to think clearly: the Philosophical Essay on Probabilities.
From games of chance to comets, from witnesses to courts of law, from insurance to the illusions that make us misjudge chance, Laplace shows that probability theory «is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculation». And it is in these pages that the famous intelligence able to embrace past and future in a single glance first appears: «Laplace’s demon».
This new Italian translation, made from the French original and rendered in contemporary Italian, gives today’s readers a classic of scientific thought that has never stopped speaking to us. An English edition is in preparation.
The edition
Original title: Essai philosophique sur les probabilités (Paris, 1814). Translation from the French, revised against the original, with an editor’s note. The fractions and calculations of the original have been reset and checked one by one. The author’s notes are given as footnotes.