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    Fatal Numbers: Why Count on Chance
    Fatal Numbers: Why Count on Chance
    Fatal Numbers: Why Count on Chance
    Ebook53 pages1 hour

    Fatal Numbers: Why Count on Chance

    By Hans Magnus Enzensberger

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    About this ebook

    Acclaimed poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger takes a fresh, sobering look at our faith in statistics, our desire to predict the future, and our dependence on fortuitousness. Tracing the interface between chance and probability in medical diagnostics, risk models, economics, and the fluctuations of financial markets, Fatal Numbers goes straight to the heart of what it means to live, plan, and make decisions in a globalized, digitized, hyperlinked, science-driven, and uncertain world ...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUpper West Side Philosophers, Inc.
    Release dateJul 11, 2012
    ISBN9781935830108
    Fatal Numbers: Why Count on Chance
    Author

    Hans Magnus Enzensberger

    Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Kaufbeuren, Alemania, 1929), quizá el ensayista con más prestigio de Alemania, estudió Literatura alemana y Filosofía. Su poesía, lúdica e irónica está recogida en los libros Defensa de los lobos, Escritura para ciegos, Poesías para los que no leen poesías, El hundimiento del Titanic o La furia de la desesperación. De su obra ensayística, cabe destacar Detalles, El interrogatorio de La Habana, para una crítica de la ecología política, Elementos para una teoría de los medios de comunicación, Política y delito, Migajas políticas o ¡Europa, Europa!

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      Book preview

      Fatal Numbers - Hans Magnus Enzensberger

      Hans Magnus Enzensberger

      Fatal Numbers

      Why Count on Chance

      Translated from the German by Karen Leeder

      With a Foreword by Gerd Gigerenzer

      *

      Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc.

      New York 2011

      *

      Subway Line, No. 3

      ~ Philosophical thinking is Yoga for the Mind® ~

      Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc. provides a publication venue for original philosophical thinking steeped in lived life, in line with our motto: philosophical living & lived philosophy.

      Smashwords Edition

      ISBN 978-1-935830-10-8

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Published by Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc.

      P. O. Box 250645, New York, NY 10025, USA

      www.westside-philosophers.com / www.yogaforthemind.us

      English Translation and Foreword Copyright (c) 2010 by Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc.

      Original publication: Fortuna und Kalkül: Zwei mathematische Belustigungen

      Copyright (c) Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2009

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. For all inquiries concerning permission to reuse material from any of our titles, please contact the publisher in writing, or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA (www.copyright.com).

      The colophon is a registered trademark of Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc.

      Our special thanks to Paul Newman for reviewing the manuscript, and to David Fried for allowing us to use his Way of Words, No.1, 2008 as a cover image. Cover image copyright (c) 2010 by David Fried

      This book is also available in print

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

      Enzensberger, Hans Magnus.

      [Fortuna und Kalkül. English]

      Fatal numbers : why count on chance / Hans Magnus Enzensberger ; translated from the German by Karen Leeder ; with a foreword by Gerd Gigerenzer.

      p. cm. -- (Subway line ; no. 3)

      Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

      ISBN 978-1-935830-01-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. Probabilities--Philosophy. 2. Chance. I. Title.

      QA273.A35E5913 2011

      519.2--dc22

      2010043287

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      Contents

      Foreword

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      Fatal Numbers

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      On the Metaphysical Antics of Mathematics

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      Select Bibliography

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      Contributors

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      Foreword

      Two gorgeously dressed young women sit upright on two chairs calmly facing each other, yet neither is aware of the other’s beauty. One is blindfolded, a wheel in her left hand, which human figures desperately climb, cling to, or tumble from; the other gazes into a hand-mirror, lost in admiration of herself. The blindfolded beauty is Fortuna—the fickle, wheel-toting goddess of chance. Her companion is sober Sapientia—the calculating, vain, divine being of science. The portrait was made in Paris some 500 years ago.

      Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s book is about the breakdown of the opposition between Fortuna and Sapientia’s alter ego, science. It is about the golden fruits of their intimate relationship, and the attempts of each to snatch the other’s possessions. Science sought to liberate humans from Fortuna’s wheel, to banish luck, and replace chances with causes. Fortuna struck back by undermining science itself with chance and creating the vast empire of probability and statistics. After their struggles neither remained the same: Fortuna was tamed, and science lost its certainty.

      Today, we live in the mesmerizing world

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