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viii Provinciales” where he referred to the doctrine of the Jesuits, or in “Les Pensées”. In Pascal’s writings, we do not find the words of “Doctrine des chances” or “Calcul des chances”, but only “Géométrie du hasard” (geometry of chance). In 1654, Blaise Pascal submitted a short paper to “Celeberrimae matheseos Academiae Parisiensi” (ancestor of the French Royal Academy of Sciences founded in 1666), with the title “Aleae Geometria” (Geometry of Chance) or “De compositione aleae in ludis ipsi subjectis”, which was the seminal paper founding Probability as a new discipline in Science. In this paper, Pascal said “… et sic matheseos demonstrationes cum aleae incertitudine jugendo, et quae contraria videntur conciliando, ab utraque nominationem suam accipiens, stupendum hunc titulum jure sibi arrogat: Aleae Geometria” that we can translate as “By the union thus realized between the demonstrations of mathematics and the uncertainty of chance, and by the conciliation of apparent contradictions, it can derive its name from both sides and arrogate to itself this astonishing title: Geometry of Chance” (« … par l’union ainsi réalisée entre les démonstrations des mathématiques et l’incertitude du hasard, et par la conciliation entre les contraires apparents, elle peut tirer son nom de part et d’autre et s’arroger à bon droit ce titre étonnant: Géométrie du Hasard ». We can observe that Blaise Pascal attached a geometrical sense to probabilities in this seminal paper. Like Jacques Bernoulli, we can also provide references to another Blaise Pascal document entitled “Art de penser” (the “Logique” of Port-Royal), published the year of his death (1662), the last chapters of which contain elements on the calculus of probabilities applied to history, medicine, miracles, literary criticism, and life events, etc. Figure 1. Blaise Pascal and His Seminal Text on « Aleae Geometria » In “De l'esprit géométrique », the use of reason for knowledge is thought on a geometric model. In geometry, the first principles are given by the natural lights common to all men, and there is no need to define them. Other principles are clearly defined by definitions of names such that it is always possible to mentally substitute the definition for the defined. These definitions of names are completely free, the only condition to be respected is univocity and invariability. Judging his solution as one of his most important contributions to science, Pascal envisioned the drafting of a small treatise entitled “Géométrie du Hasard” (Geometry of Chance). He would never write it. Inspired by this, Christian Huygens wrote the first treatise on the calculation of chances, the “De ratiociniis in ludo aleae” (“On calculation in games of chance”, 1657). We can conclude this preamble by observing that Blaise Pascal’s seminal work on Probability was inspired by Geometry. The
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Differential Geometrical Theory of Statistics
Title
Differential Geometrical Theory of Statistics
Authors
Frédéric Barbaresco
Frank Nielsen
Editor
MDPI
Location
Basel
Date
2017
Language
English
License
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
ISBN
978-3-03842-425-3
Size
17.0 x 24.4 cm
Pages
476
Keywords
Entropy, Coding Theory, Maximum entropy, Information geometry, Computational Information Geometry, Hessian Geometry, Divergence Geometry, Information topology, Cohomology, Shape Space, Statistical physics, Thermodynamics
Categories
Naturwissenschaften Physik
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