Figures of Chance II

Figures of Chance II: Chance in Theory and Practice proposes a multidisciplinary analysis of cultural phenomena related to notions of chance and contingency. Alongside its transhistorical companion volume (Figures of Chance I) it considers how the projective and predictive capacity of societies is shaped by representations and cultural models of a reality that is understood by varying degrees to be contingent unpredictable or chaotic. This volume reevaluates the role played by figurative representations of chance in contemporary discourses about chance and contingency. Written by seven interdisciplinary teams and encompassing philosophy literature history of science sociology mathematics cognitive science information science and art history this text puts scientific conceptions of chance into dialogue with their contemporary literary and artistic representations. It thus brings out the central role played by art in the human perception of chance and in our methods for projecting the future in order to better understand contemporary human attitudes in the face of risk.The Introduction and Chapter One of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at taylorfrancis under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.