"Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities"
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Boole gives probability the faintly embarrassing status of a coping mechanism: not a law of nature, but a disciplined way of making peace with what we don t know. Calling it "expectation founded upon partial knowledge" strips away any mystique. Probability is not fate, not vibes, not even truth; it is rational guesswork under constraints. The line is surgical because it reframes the whole enterprise as epistemology, not just arithmetic.
The second sentence is the pressure point. "A perfect acquaintance" is a hypothetical so absolute it is almost taunting: if you could see every relevant circumstance, the future would harden into "certainty", and probability would evaporate. That is Boole writing from the 19th-century dream of determinism, when physics and logic were busy selling a universe that behaved like a well-built machine. The subtext is that uncertainty is not in events; it is in us. Probability exists because our access to causes is incomplete.
Yet the quote also contains an unintended modern irony. The more science has learned, the more "all the circumstances" looks like a fantasy: chaotic dynamics, quantum limits, and complex systems turn omniscience into a conceptual mirage. Boole s intent is to anchor probability in logic and knowledge; what makes it resonate now is that it reads like an origin story for today s data culture, where better information is promised as a path from risk to certainty, even as the world keeps producing more variables than we can ever capture.
The second sentence is the pressure point. "A perfect acquaintance" is a hypothetical so absolute it is almost taunting: if you could see every relevant circumstance, the future would harden into "certainty", and probability would evaporate. That is Boole writing from the 19th-century dream of determinism, when physics and logic were busy selling a universe that behaved like a well-built machine. The subtext is that uncertainty is not in events; it is in us. Probability exists because our access to causes is incomplete.
Yet the quote also contains an unintended modern irony. The more science has learned, the more "all the circumstances" looks like a fantasy: chaotic dynamics, quantum limits, and complex systems turn omniscience into a conceptual mirage. Boole s intent is to anchor probability in logic and knowledge; what makes it resonate now is that it reads like an origin story for today s data culture, where better information is promised as a path from risk to certainty, even as the world keeps producing more variables than we can ever capture.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|---|
| Source | George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Passage on probability commonly cited from this work. |
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