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Knowledge and Logic

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Abstract

Science does not prove anything. Science infers statements about reality. Sometimes the statements are of stunning precision; sometimes they are rather vague. Science never reaches exact results. Mathematics provides proofs but it is devoid of reality. The present book shows in mathematical terms how to express uncertain experience in scientific statements.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Thomas Bayes, 1702–1761, English mathematician and Anglican clergyman. In a posthumously published treatise, he formulated for the first time a solution to the problem of statistical inference.

  2. 2.

    Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace, 1749–1827, French mathematician and physicist. He contributed to celestial and general mechanics. His work Mécanique céleste has been considered to rival Newton’s Principia. He invented spherical harmonics and formulated and applied Bayes’ theorem independently of him.

  3. 3.

    We do not distinguish between the quantity \(\xi \) and a statement about the value of \(\xi \).

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  1. Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany

    Hanns Ludwig Harney

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Harney, H.L. (2016). Knowledge and Logic. In: Bayesian Inference. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41644-1_1

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