Probability: What it is and why it's so important and useful

Ian hacking has written that the concept of the modern idea of probability emerged in 1654 - the year of a famous correspondence between Pascal and Fermat that concerned how to settle the winnings in a game of dice interrupted by the king’s gendarmerie. Solving this problem involved a developing a concept that, as Hacking puts it, is “Janus faced.” One face looks to the world and the other to the mind. Chance says something about the world - the outcomes of dice tossing - but also something about rational betting odds. Most accounts of this concept characterize it in terms of one or the other aspect and then try to explain or explain away the other aspect. But it seems impossible to reduce one aspect to the other and as Hacking emphasizes the two aspects are inseparable.  Chance is an objective feature of the world that guides subjective belief and action. 
 
The concept of probability has become central to the sciences and beyond: physics, biology, psychology, economics, computer science, and so on. Many departments in the university have a course devoted to statistics and probability as applied to their subject matter. Despite this, the nature of probability is a very controversial matter in the philosophy of science and mathematics.  This course will address philosophical views about the natures of probability and randomness. It will begin with the history of the concept and then discuss a number of issues including:
1)     Is the world deterministic?
2)     What is randomness?
3)     Is the concept of probability the same in the various science?
4)     How are the objective and subjective aspects of probability related?
5)     How does statistics find out what probabilities there are?
The course will use Ian Hacking’s books The Emergence of Probability and The Taming of Chance, along with excerpts from writings by Hume, Laplace, Popper, Reichenbach and others.