The rhetoric of probability from the new science to common sense

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, probability, hitherto primarily a quality of rhetoric, expands to become a field of mathematics, a criterion of experimental demonstration, and a guiding principle for the development of the English novel. These applications overlap but are far from coextensive. “The Rhetoric of Probability from the New Science to Common Sense” traces the role of probability, as a fluid concept, in the binding and eventual disassociation of science and fiction during this time. The species of probability generated by fictional narrative is utilized to support empirically indemonstrable hypotheses before and after the rise of experimental culture in the seventeenth century. While the early novel, especially the corpus of Daniel Defoe, has long been spoken of as a fictional imitation of experimental practice, there are significant cases in which fiction is part of the process of experimental demonstration. The exclusively fictional character of the novel later solidifies in the works of Richardson and Fielding as the forms of mathematical and experimental probability developed over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are internalized for aesthetic effect.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Alex Solomo