A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities by Pierre-Simon Laplace

Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486170343
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X.

APPLICATION OF THE CALCULUS OF PROBABILITIES TO THE MORAL SCIENCES.

WE have just seen the advantages of the analysis of probabilities in the investigation of the laws of natural phenomena whose causes are unknown or so complicated that their results cannot be submitted to calculus. This is the case of nearly all subjects of the moral sciences. So many unforeseen causes, either hidden or inappreciable, influence human institutions that it is impossible to judge à priori the results. The series of events which time brings about develops these results and indicates the means of remedying those that are harmful. Wise laws have often been made in this regard ; but because we had neglected to conserve the motives many have been abrogated as useless, and the fact that vexatious experiences have made the need felt anew ought to have reestablished them.

It is very important to keep in each branch of the public administration an exact register of the results which the various means used have produced, and which are so many experiences made on a large scale by governments. Let us apply to the political and moral sciences the method founded upon observation and upon calculus, the method which has served us so well in the natural sciences. Let us not offer in the least a useless and often dangerous resistance to the inevitable effects of the progress of knowledge; but let us change only with an extreme circumspection our institutions and the usages to which we have already so long conformed. We should know well by the experience of the past the difficulties which they present; but we are ignorant of the extent of the evils which their change can produce. In this ignorance the theory of probability directs us to avoid all change; especially is it necessary to avoid the sudden changes which in the moral world as well as in the physical world never operate without a great loss of vital force.

Already the calculus of probabilities has been applied with success to several subjects of the moral sciences. I shall present here the principal results.

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