The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal

by James Franklin

A different kind of humanistic project in history is that of Machiavelli’s Discourses. He attempts to make history a science by extracting maxims from history: generalizations that are summaries of and lessons taught by the many individual events of the past. A typical example is “Dictatorship is advantageous in times of emergency.” Naturally, there are continual problems with the wealth of counterexamples to the maxims; Machiavelli attempts to explain them away individually, rather than saying that the maxims only hold true for the most part.124 His advice on what action to take in case of doubt is unhelpful: “In all discussions one should consider which alternative involves fewer inconveniences and should adopt this as the better course; for one never finds any issue that is clear cut and not open to question.”125 To consider only the payoff, and not the probability of occurrence, will not lead to a satisfactory decision theory.