"The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular"
About this Quote
Gibbon’s line skewers a temptation as old as gambling and as modern as polling dashboards: mistaking statistical truth for personal prophecy. “So true in general” concedes the power of probability at the population level, where patterns emerge and averages behave. Then he snaps the trap shut: “so fallacious in particular.” The fallacy isn’t that probability fails; it’s that people ask it to deliver certainty about single, vivid cases - the exact moment where our brains most crave an answer.
As an Enlightenment historian, Gibbon is writing in an era newly enchanted by quantification, systems, and “laws” that promised to tame human messiness. His wording borrows the prestige of scientific language only to warn against its misuse. Calling probability a “law” is slightly ironic: laws sound like guarantees, but probability is a disciplined way of admitting ignorance. The subtext is epistemological humility, wrapped in a dry, patrician jab at overconfident reason.
The sentence also doubles as a historian’s credo. Big historical forces can be legible in hindsight - demographic pressure, fiscal weakness, institutional decay. Yet any specific turning point, assassination, storm, or misjudgment can look inevitable only after it happens. Gibbon reminds us that explaining the general drift of events is not the same as predicting the next twist. It’s a warning against retrospective certainty and against the modern habit of turning “likely” into “fated” the moment a narrative wants clean lines.
As an Enlightenment historian, Gibbon is writing in an era newly enchanted by quantification, systems, and “laws” that promised to tame human messiness. His wording borrows the prestige of scientific language only to warn against its misuse. Calling probability a “law” is slightly ironic: laws sound like guarantees, but probability is a disciplined way of admitting ignorance. The subtext is epistemological humility, wrapped in a dry, patrician jab at overconfident reason.
The sentence also doubles as a historian’s credo. Big historical forces can be legible in hindsight - demographic pressure, fiscal weakness, institutional decay. Yet any specific turning point, assassination, storm, or misjudgment can look inevitable only after it happens. Gibbon reminds us that explaining the general drift of events is not the same as predicting the next twist. It’s a warning against retrospective certainty and against the modern habit of turning “likely” into “fated” the moment a narrative wants clean lines.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|
More Quotes by Edward
Add to List
