The Science of Conjecture

Franklin's book is magnificent... Think of [it] as a non-fiction equivalent of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

The Science of Conjecture is a masterly work, beautifully written, and based on encyclopaedic research... It is simply a tour de force that is unlikely to be surpassed for many a year.

Statistics teachers who like to sprinkle a little history and philosophy into their classes will find much here to delight and challenge them... This is a serious and scholarly work that I expect often will inform my teaching.

[This book has given me] sheer enjoyment in its density of strange information, in the wit and clarity if its writing, and in the vigour of its argumentation. I recommend it unreservedly to all interested in its subject.

This is the intellectual book of the year, and it ought to become one of the great classics of intellectual history.

The strength of The Science of Conjecture lies in its panoramic exposition of developments across the centuries and across intellectual disciplines and human endeavors. It is, as one reviewer wrote, 'a magesterial account of matters as diverse as the Talmud, Justinian's Digest, torture, witch hunts, Tudor treason trials, ancient and medieval astronomy and physics, humanist histriography, scholastic philosophy, speculations in public debt, and 17th century mathematics.'

A remarkable book. Mr. Franklin writes clearly and exhibits a wry wit. But he also ranges knowledgeably across many disciplines and over many centuries. There are several reasons to read this book, but perhaps the best reason is its contemporary relevance. The lessons he discusses have pertinence to an age like ours, which has witnessed a gradual waning of faith in the objectivity of the relation of uncertain evidence to conclusion.

In The Science of Conjecture, James Franklin shows us how deeply and subtly jurists and philosophers from ancient Greece onwards have explored how we can deal rationally with real-life cases (law cases, for instance, or scientific experiments) where the link between cause and effect is not obvious.

Since many in the nominalist/empiricist/positivist tradition deny that we can know natures, this book has a place in teacher education as well as legal education for the challenges it poses the reader on how we know, and how well we know, through induction, perception and abstraction.

The text has an even wider importance in that it signals the need for more, not less, study of the history, philosophy and social studies in science to occupy a greater space in undergraduate degrees so that an educated electorate is better able to evaluate what the STEM community tells us is good for the progress of society.

The Science of Conjecture is an extraordinary work, a clearly written history of the ideas of evidence and of uncertainty before Pascal. Franklin has mastered a vast literature over thousands of years, bringing it together in scholarly fashion, fully annotated.