De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser

3 More on this is to be found in Galavotti 2011.Ģ According to a widespread opinion, even before the encounter between logical empiricism and American pragmatism a number of European scientists including Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, had embraced a view of science with strong affinities to the pragmatist outlook.

2 Evidence that in Europe ideas close to pragmatist philosophy were around before the encounter with (.).

This paper concentrates on three representatives of the subjective theory, namely Frank Ramsey, Bruno de Finetti and Émile Borel. Among the main interpretations of probability – frequentism, propensionism, logicism and subjectivism -, the latter is no doubt the closest to the pragmatist outlook. In addition, scientist-philosophers like Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henri Poincaré, Pierre Duhem, and Karl Pearson, who heralded a conception of science and knowledge at large that was close to pragmatism, were very influential in that debate.

Upholders of different interpretations of probability such as Hans Reichenbach, Ernest Nagel, Rudolf Carnap, Frank Ramsey, and Bruno de Finetti, acknowledged their debt towards pragmatist philosophers, including Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Clarence Irving Lewis, William Dewey and Giovanni Vailati.

Pragmatism, taken not just as a philosophical movement but as a way of addressing problems, strongly influenced the debate on the foundations of probability during the first half of the twentieth century.

De Nacht der Girondijnen by Jacob Presser