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Probabilities and philosophy of mathematics at Cournot. (Probabilités et philosophie des mathématiques chez Cournot.) (French) Zbl 0822.01002

The author stresses that Cournot, like Poisson before him, distinguished between subjective and objective probabilities and thus elevated the theory of probability to the realm of pure mathematics (without achieving its “transformation profonde”). Actually, however, the theory remained in the domain of applied mathematics since, until the beginning of this century, densities or characteristic functions did not become objects of study per se. The author also discusses Cournot’s attitude towards mathematics and its interrelation with reality as well as towards the theory of knowledge as related to mathematics. At the very least, Cournot was in this respect closer to modern ideas than Engels who defined mathematics as a science of quantifying nature and whose thoughts fettered Soviet mathematicians. A related paper is L. Daston, “How probabilities came to be objective and subjective” [Hist. Math. 21, No. 3, 330-344 (1994; Zbl 0805.01009)].

MSC:

01A55 History of mathematics in the 19th century
60-03 History of probability theory

Biographic References:

Cournot, A. A.

Citations:

Zbl 0805.01009
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