Publisher's Synopsis
Chance in Theory and Practice proposes a multidisciplinary analysis that will serve as a reference work on cultural phenomena related to the evolution of representations of chance and contingency. It aims to measure what the projective and predictive capacity of societies owes, from the beginnings of the modern age, to their representation and/or cultural modeling of reality, insofar as this reality is understood to be contingent. This volume reevaluates the role played by figurative representations of chance in contemporary discourses of knowledge about chance and contingency. Written by seven interdisciplinary teams, including philosophy, literature, history of science, sociology, mathematics, cognitive science, information science, and art history, this text puts the scientific formulations of chance into dialogue with their contemporary literary representations. It thus brings out the central role played by art in the human perception of chance, and in modern and postmodern practices of projecting the future, in order to better understand contemporary human attitudes in the face of risk.
