The Emergence of Mathematical Probability from the Perspctive of the Leibniz-Jacob Bernoulli Correspondence

摘要

This paper moves out form a defined body of evidence, namely the corre- spondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Jacob Bernoulli, to see what light it casts on the emergence of mathematical probability in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. At many times during his life Leibniz repeated his recommendation that serous attention should be paid to developing a theory of probabilistic reasoning. In his Ars Conjec- tandi (The Art of Conjecturing), Jacob Bernoulli tried to do just what Leibniz at many times recommended, but he did not finish the work before his death in 1705, partly because he lacked information about real-life situ- ations.