Steve Greenleaf

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One could, in principle, use this reasoning to justify a science of dice throwing, which certainly deals with inclinations to future contingents.41 But Aquinas himself uses it to reconcile astrology and free will. Because the human will is free, the stars cannot determine it. But they can “dispositively incline” it, so that, since most men follow their passions, astrologers often predict the truth, “especially in public events, which depend on the multitude.”42 This last remark, with its distinction between the individual and the multitude, introduces Aquinas’s most important contribution to ...more
The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal
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