The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (review)

366 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY made a sharp distinction between the philosophy of Plato and his later followers, whom Brucker termed "syncretistic" rather than "Platonic." Thus it remained for others of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century to work out the details of the distinction between "Platonism" and "Neoplatonism," which we accept today as axiomatic. I say we accept it as axiomatic, though peculiarly enough some scholars who work on the Renaissance, for example, do not seem to realize that the Platonism of Ficino or that inherited by Galileo is far different from anything that can be found in the genuine works of Plato. Historians of science, among others, have been prone to dismiss Galileo's or Kepler's so-called Platonism as a fiction after finding there to be little direct correlation between their writings and the works of Plato. Galileo, in some ways at least a child of his age, did not distinguish between Plato and what Tigerstedt aptly calls "the Neoplatonic Interpretation of Plato." Like most people of the age--Serranus was an exception--the Plato known to Galileo was the many-layered fabrication which had taken form over many centuries. This volume is a notable contribution to the history of philosophy. It is densely packed with information and, indeed, to me at least seems too condensed for its own good. The reader can hardly doubt that the learned author might easily have written a study three times the length with little additional effort. Had he done so his readers would have been far richer for it! Nevertheless, as the book stands it touches upon many important problems connected with the transmission of ideas and the historical interpretation of philosophical doctrines. One hopes that it might encourage others to take up some of the leads the author suggests, but does not follow up. Though one feels that Tigerstedt's overall interpretation is correct, some of his points of emphasis might be misplaced. For example, I am not sure that adequate attention is given to the syncretic orientation of Ficino and Pico, for there is both a qualitative and quantitative difference between their new synthesis and that of earlier Neoplatonists . Moreover, perhaps inadequate attention is given to the Neoplatonism of sixteenth -century France, as opposed to the Ramus-Serranus strand. Champier, Postel, Le Roy, and Charpentier, among others, are deserving of consideration when the full story is told. I cannot help but think that Jacopo Mazzoni and, especially, Francesco Patrizi, who were among the first to be given university chairs specifically to teach Platonic philosophy, must somehow be integrated into the picture. Patrizi was certainly one of the dominating influences on seventeenth-century interpretations of Platonism, as we see from the use of his writings by Thomas Stanley, the Cambridge Platonists, Leibniz and others. One would also like to know how Francesco Barozzi and other mathematical interpretators of Plato fit into the picture. Regardless of these and other relatively minor points, I must conclude by emphasizing that Tigerstedt has given us a work of great value and one that is of a type all too rare today. It is carefully and extensively documented, well organized and readable (in spite of a few infelicities of English style), in addition to containing many valuable insights into the history of philosophical interpretation. CHARLESB. SCHMITT The Warburg Institute The Emergence o/ Probability: A Philosophical Study o/ Early Ideas about Probability , Induction and Statistical Inference. By Ian Hacking. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Pp. 209. $15.95) Modem thought begins in the latter part of the seventeenth century. By the publication of Hume's Treatise in 1739 the structure of the present conceptual scheme or episteme was pretty well established. Before the Port Royal Logic in 1662 its development had not properly begun. The beginning of this conceptual era is not merely a BOOK REVIEWS 367 convenient cut in a continuous process. There is a genuine discontinuity: Thought on either side of the discontinuity is incommensurable and incomprehensible in terms of that on the other side. It is not a question of growth or of increased complexity; the relation is rather like that of two algebras neither of which may be described in...