Courses

This class looks at how European society tried to tame chance and comprehend its whims before and after the arrival of the mathematics of probability around 1650. How did people move from consulting oracles to developing the insurance business? One simple answer is the discovery of the mathematical calculation of risk. But insurance contracts appear well before the availability of that tool, and insurers continued to do their business without it after it became widely known. This class explores why chance did not become “more” accurate – an object of science and knowledge – with the arrival of the probability calculus. It examines risk as a historically shaped experience in various areas of its manifestations including oracles, gambling, insurance, philosophy, and theology.

The semester groups the history of risk into four thematically and chronologically organized units of focus: (1) We will begin with a survey of how we can study risk as historical construct asking what components shape a society’s understanding and handling of risk. In order to gain insight into what risk meant before ca. 1350, we will analyze oracles and curses people used to cope with future events in antiquity. (2) We will then explore the world of gambling to understand how closely related its risks were to those found in business practices. (3) Turning to late medieval and early modern insurance, we will analyze contracts, laws and theories of insurance. Why was it that risk became a commodity – a thing separable from the merchandise it concerned – only by 1350? (4) The next and last unit takes us to theories of risk before and after
the development of the mathematical theory of probability to challenge and refine the notion that mathematics “counted away” divine providence.

(Note: You do not need any prior mathematical skills for the class.)