Cover -- Contents -- Preface to the 2015 Edition -- Preface -- 1. The Ancient Law of Proof -- Egypt and Mesopotamia -- The Talmud -- Roman Law: Proof and Presumptions -- Indian Law -- 2. The Medieval Law of Evidence: Suspicion, Half-proof, and Inquisition -- Dark Age Ordeals -- The Gregorian Revolution -- The Glossators Invent Half-proof -- Presumptions in Canon Law -- Grades of Evidence and Torture -- The Postglossators Bartolus and Baldus: The Completed Theory -- The Inquisition -- Law in the East -- 3. Renaissance Law -- Henry VIII Presumed Wed -- Tudor Treason Trials -- Continental Law: The Treatises on Presumptions -- The Witch Inquisitors -- English Legal Theory and the Reasonable Man -- 4. The Doubting Conscience and Moral Certainty -- Penance and Doubts -- The Doctrine of Probabilism -- Suarez: Negative and Positive Doubt -- Grotius, Silhon, and the Morality of the State -- Hobbes and the Risk of Attack -- The Scandal of Laxism -- English Casuists Pursue the Middle Way -- Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz, Prince of Laxists -- Pascal's Provincial Letters -- 5. Rhetoric, Logic, Theory -- The Greek Vocabulary of Probability -- The Sophists Sell the Art of Persuasion -- Aristotle's Rhetoric and Logic -- The Rhetoric to Alexander -- Roman Rhetoric: Cicero and Quintilian -- Islamic Logic -- The Scholastic Dialectical Syllogism -- Probability in Ordinary Language -- Humanist Rhetoric -- Late Scholastic Logics -- 6. Hard Science -- Observation and Theory -- Aristotle's Not-by-Chance Argument -- Averaging of Observations in Greek Astronomy -- The Simplicity of Theories -- Nicole Oresme on Relative Frequency -- Copernicus -- Kepler Harmonizes Observations -- Galileo on the Probability of the Copernican Hypothesis -- 7. Soft Science and History -- The Physiognomics -- Divination and Astrology -- The Empiric School of Medicine on Drug Testing.

The Talmud and Maimonides on Majorities -- Vernacular Averaging and Quality Control -- Experimentation in Biology -- The Authority of Histories -- The Authenticity of Documents -- Valla and the Donation of Constantine -- Cano on the Signs of True Histories -- 8. Philosophy: Action and Induction -- Carneades's Mitigated Skepticism -- The Epicureans on Inference from Signs -- Inductive Skepticism and Avicenna's Reply -- Aquinas on Tendencies -- Scotus and Ockham on Induction -- Nicholas of Autrecourt -- The Decline of the West -- Bacon and Descartes: Certainty? or Moral Certainty? -- The Jesuits and Hobbes on Induction -- Pascal's Deductivist Philosophy of Science -- 9. Religion: Laws of God, Laws of Nature -- The Argument from Design -- The Church Fathers -- Inductive Skepticism by Revelation -- John of Salisbury -- Maimonides on Creation -- Are Laws of Nature Necessary? -- The Reasonableness of Christianity -- Pascal's Wager -- 10. Aleatory Contracts: Insurance, Annuities, and Bets -- The Price of Peril -- Doubtful Claims in Jewish Law -- Olivi on Usury and Future Profits -- Pricing Life Annuities -- Speculation in Public Debt -- Insurance Rates -- Renaissance Bets and Speculation -- Lots and Lotteries -- Commerce and the Casuists -- 11. Dice -- Games of Chance in Antiquity -- The Medieval Manuscript on the Interrupted Game -- Cardano -- Gamblers and Casuists -- Galileo's Fragment -- De Méré and Roberval -- The Fermat-Pascal Correspondence -- Huygens' Reckoning in Games of Chance -- Caramuel -- 12. Conclusion -- Subsymbolic Probability and the Transition to Symbols -- Kinds of Probability and the Stages in Discovering Them -- Why Not Earlier? -- Two Parallel Histories -- The Genius of the Scholastics and the Orbit of Aristotle -- The Place of Law in the History of Ideas -- Conclusion and Moral -- Epilogue: The Survival of Unquantified Probability.

The Port-Royal Logic -- Leibniz's Logic of Probability -- To the Present -- Appendix: Review of Work on Probability before 1660 -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X.