Science and method / by Henri Poincaré ; translated by Francis Maitland ; with a preface by Bertrand Russell.

Date:
[1914?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Science and method / by Henri Poincaré ; translated by Francis Maitland ; with a preface by Bertrand Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    93/296 (page 89)
    But as regards the number it the question presents more difficulties, and for the moment I have no satisfactory explanation to give. There are many other questions that might be raised, if I wished to attack them before answering the one I have more especially set myself. When we arrive at a simple result, when, for instance, we find a round number, we say that such a result cannot be due to chance, and we seek for a non-fortuitous cause to explain it. And in fact there is only a very slight likelihood that, out of 10,000 numbers, chance will give us a round number, the number 10,000 for in- stance ; there is only one chance in 10,000. But neither is there more than one chance in 10,000 that it will give us any other particular number, and yet this result does not astonish us, and we feel no hesita- tion about attributing it to chance, and that merely because it is less striking. Is this a simple illusion on our part, or are there cases in which this view is legitimate? We must hope so, for otherwise all science would be impossible. When we wish to check a hypothesis, what do we do? We cannot verify all its consequences, since they are infinite in number. We content ourselves with verifying a few, and, if we succeed, we declare that the hypothesis is confirmed, for so much success could not be due to chance. It is always at bottom the same reasoning. I cannot justify it here completely, it would take me too long, but I can say at least this. We find ourselves faced by two hypotheses, either a simple cause or else that assemblage of complex causes we call chance. We find it natural to admit that the