Probability in the Sciences -

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Résumé :
Probability has become one of the most characteristic con? cepts of modern culture, and a 'probabilistic way of thinking' may be said to have penetrated almost every sector of our in? tellectual life. However it would be difficult to determine an explicit list of 'positive' features, to be proposed as identifica? tion marks of this way of thinking. One would rather say that it is characterized by certain 'negative' features, i. e. by certain at? titudes which appear to be the negation of well established tra? ditional assumptions, conceptual frameworks, world outlooks and the like. It is because of this opposition to tradition that the probabilistic approach is perceived as expressing a 'modern' in? tellectual style. As an example one could mention the widespread diffidence in philosophy with respect to self -contained systems claiming to express apodictic truths, instead of which much weaker pretensions are preferred, that express 'probable' interpretations of reality, of history, of man (the hermeneutic trend). An ana? logous example is represented by the interest devoted to the study of different patterns of 'argumentation', dealing wiht reasonings which rely not so much on the truth of the premisses and stringent formal logic links, but on a display of contextual conditions (depending on the audience, and on accepted stan? dards, judgements, and values), which render the premisses and the conclusions more 'probable' (the new rhetoric).

Sommaire:
1: Logical, Methodological and Philosophical Aspects of Probability.- Probability: A Composite Concept.- Two Faces and three Masks of Probability.- Ambiguous Uses of Probability.- Some Logical Distinctions Exploited by Differing Analyses of Pascalian Probability.- Probability and Confirmation.- Chance, Cause and the State-Space Approach.- World as System Self-synthesized by Quantum Networking.- A Brief Note on the Relationship between Probability, Selective Strategies and Possible Models.- 2: Probability, Statistics and Information.- Critical Replications for Statistical Design.- The Contribution of A.N. Kolmogorov to the Notion of Entropy.- The Probability of Singular Events.- Probability, Randomness and Information.- 3: Probability in the Natural Sciences.- Probability, Organization and Evolution in Biochemistry.- Relativity and Probability, Classical and Quantal.- Probabilistic Ontology and Space-Time: Updating an Historical Debate.- Probability and the Mystery of Quantum Mechanics.- Probability and Determinism in Quantum Theory.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.