The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist

503 Pages·2013·2.595 MB·English

by  Rudiger Campe, Ellwood Wiggins

the game of probability

Cultural Memory
in
the
Present
Mieke Bal and Hent de Vries, Editors

THE GAME OF PROBABILITY
Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist
Rüdiger Campe
Translated by Ellwood H. Wiggins, Jr.
stanford university press
stanford, california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
English translation © 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford
Junior University. All rights reserved.
The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist was
originally published in German under the title Spiel der Wahrscheinlichkeit.
Literatur und Berechnung zwischen Pascal und Kleist © Wallstein Verlag,
Göttingen 2002.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission
of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campe, Rüdiger, author.
[Spiel der Wahrscheinlichkeit. English]
The game of probability : literature and calculation from Pascal to Kleist /
Rüdiger Campe ; translated by Ellwood H. Wiggins, Jr.
pages cm. — (Cultural memory in the present)
“Originally published in German under the title Spiel der Wahrscheinlichkeit.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8047-6864-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8047-6865-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. European literature—17th century—History and criticism. 2. European
literature—18th century—History and criticism. 3. Probability in literature.
I. Title. II. Series: Cultural memory in the present.
PN744.C3613 2012
809'.93384—dc23
2012010489
Contents
Introduction 1
part i. games for example: modeling probability
1 Theology and the Law: Dice in the Air 15
2 Numbers and Calculation in Context: The Game
of Decision—Pascal 37
3 Writing the Calculation of Chances: Justice
and Fair Game—Christiaan Huygens 73
4 Probability, a Postscript to the Theory of Chance: Logic
and Contractual Law—Arnauld, Leibniz, Pufendorf 97
5 Probability Applied: Ancient Topoi and the Theory
of Games of Chance—Jacob Bernoulli 118
6 Continued Proclamations: The Law
of logica probabilium—Leibniz 147
7 Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, or, The Improbability
of Survival 172
part ii. verisimilitude spelled out: the appearance
of truth
8 Numbers and Tables in Narration: Jurists
and Clergymen and Their Bureaucratic Hobbies 195
9 Novels and Tables: Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year
and Schnabel’s Die Insel Felsenburg 220
viii Contents
10 The Theory of Probability and the Form of the Novel:
Daniel Bernoulli on Utility Value, the Anthropology
of Risk, and Gellert’s Epistolary Fiction 248
11 “Improbable Probability”: The Theory of the Novel
and Its Trope—Fielding’s Tom Jones and Wieland’s
Agathon 273
12 The Appearance of Truth: Logic, Aesthetics,
and Experimentation—Lambert 305
13 “Probable” or “Plausible”: Mathematical Formula
Versus Philosophical Discourse—Kant 338
14 Kleist’s “Improbable Veracities,” or, A Romantic Ending 369
Conclusion 391
Notes 399
Bibliography 465
Introduction
The term “probability” implies the notion of reality. In Europe
from antiquity to the early modern era, at least, this was long held to be
the case. Speaking of probability—of what approaches or appears simi-
lar to truth—meant making a statement or assumption very different in
its stance toward the actual world from the truth of science and philoso-
phy. The standards of reliability and mutual understanding that politi-
cians adhered to in their debates and people used in everyday life, as well
as those attributed to poetry and the rhetorical arts, were not supposed
to meet the criteria of truth. Instead, probability was thought to provide
a kind of reliability and mutual understanding that did not owe its exis-
tence to criteria for true knowledge and efforts to define and establish
them. With probability, orators and writers presupposed the existence of
a reality that philosophy and science had to take into account. With its
universal claims and rational imperatives, science had to prove and justify
itself before reality. “Probability,” then, was the password for access to this
real world that set up camp around the fortified city of the sciences.
This claim admittedly presents a partial view of what probability
meant in antiquity and the persistence of this meaning into early moder-
nity. It was not reality itself, but rather a watchword that opened the door
to reality. With the term “probability,” one assumed reality and made
use of this assumption. Only under the aegis of probability could reality
become a subject of knowledge, whether in philosophy, science, or his-
tory. When lawyers produced probable arguments before the court, when