The Logic of Chance.

rare

First edition of this significant contribution to the fields of logic and philosophy by Cambridge mathematician John Venn (1834-1923). Rare, with no copies appearing in recent auction records. This copy from the library of logician and classicist Richard Shute (1849-1886), who obtained and inscribed it in the year of publication, 1866, while he was a student at Eton.

'In The Logic of Chance Venn pioneered the frequency theory of probability, in which assertions of probability are understood as purely empirically based judgements of the recurrence of types of events over time, independent of an observer's feelings. As with much of his work, Venn is here exploring the logic and limits of belief. As with his Hulsean lectures, his advice is to err in favour of scepticism. His originality does not lie in the theory of probability which he developed, nor in his rejection of alternative theories, especially the idea that probability deals with graduations of beliefs. It is displayed in his patient analysis of the wide variety of different and yet legitimate uses of the term probability, which makes theorizing so complex and difficult, his recognition that probability theory had application to a limited proportion of human conduct, and his application of this to the moral sciences' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

Venn was also known for his contributions to the mathematical theory of the diagrams that now bear his name, as well as his 1881 publication Symbolic Logic. Both it and The Logic of Chance were used as textbooks through the early twentieth century (Davis, 'John Venn, the Man Behind the Diagrams', SIAM News, November 1, 2022).

First edition; 8vo (16.5 x 10 cm); contemporary bookplate and ownership inscription, contents clean; contemporary tan calf, spine elaborately gilt in compartments, green morocco label, double gilt fillets, gilt floral roll to turn-ins, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, joints repaired with tissue, edges a little rubbed and scuffed, scratches to boards, very good condition; 370pp.