Pascal is called the founder of modern probability theory. He earns this title not only for the familiar correspondence with Fermat on games of chance, but also for his conception of decision theory, and because he was an instrument in the demolition of probabilism, a doctrine which would have precluded rational probability theory.
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Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 23Ian Hacking
Probability is too important to be left to the experts. [...] The experts, by their very expert training and practice, often miss the obvious and distort reality seriously. [...] The desire of the experts to publish and gain credit in the eyes of their peers has distorted the development of probability theory from the needs of the average user. The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in the matter. Neither the intuition of the man in the street, nor the sophisticated results of the experts provides a safe basis for important actions in the world we live in.
Richard Hamming
Third Theory.—According to this theory, there is nothing in the whole Universe... that is due to chance; everything is the result of will, intention, and rule. It is a matter of course that he who rules must know. The Mohametan Ashariyah adhere to this theory, notwithstanding evident absurdities implied in it. ...The Ashariyah were therefore compelled to assume that motion and rest of living beings are predestined, and that it is not in the power of a man to do a certain thing or to leave it undone. ...It follows also from this theory, that precepts are perfectly useless, since the people to whom any law is given... can neither do what they are commanded nor abstain from what they are forbidden. ...According to this theory, it must also be assumed that the actions of God have no final cause. All these absurdities are admitted by the Ashariyah for the purpose of saving this theory.
Maimonides
Previous to the time of Pascal, who would have thought of measuring doubt and belief? Who could have conceived that the investigation of petty games of chance would have led to the most sublime branch of mathematical science - the theory of probabilities?
William Stanley Jevons
Quantum mechanics is the most useful and powerful theory physicists have ever devised. Yet today, nearly 90 years after its formulation, disagreement about the meaning of the theory is stronger than ever. New interpretations appear every year. None ever disappear. ... The message from QBism is this: You needn't feel guilty about never getting nervous about this stuff. You were right not to be bothered. But for the sake of intellectual coherence, you had better reexamine what you wrongly may have thought you understood perfectly well about the nature of probability.
David Mermin
I'm not familiar that they're dodging it. Maybe they are. But I think schools also ought to be fair to all views. Because, frankly, Darwinism is not an established scientific fact. It is a theory of evolution, that's why it's called the theory of evolution.
Mike Huckabee
Hacking, Ian
HaCohen, Ran
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