Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk Read Online Free Page A

priesthood
that claimed a monopoly on the lines of communication with the powers of mystery. Civilization as we know it might have progressed at a
much faster pace if the Greeks had anticipated what their intellectual
progeny-the men of the Renaissance-were to discover some thousand years later.

    Despite the emphasis that the Greeks placed on theory, they had
little interest in applying it to any kind of technology that would
have changed their views of the manageability of the future. When
Archimedes invented the lever, he claimed that he could move the
earth if only he could find a place to stand. But apparently he gave no
thought to changing it. The daily life of the Greeks, and their standard
of living, were much the same as the way that their forebears had subsisted for thousands of years. They hunted, fished, grew crops, bore
children, and used architectural techniques that were only variations
on themes developed much earlier in the Tigris-Euphrates valley and
in Egypt.
    Genuflection before the winds was the only form of risk management that caught their attention: their poets and dramatists sing repeatedly of their dependence on the winds, and beloved children were
sacrificed to appease the winds. Most important, the Greeks lacked a
numbering system that would have enabled them to calculate instead of
just recording the results of their activities.'
    I do not mean to suggest that the Greeks gave no thought to the
nature of probability. The ancient Greek word EtKOs (eikos), which
meant plausible or probable, had the same sense as the modern concept
of probability: "to be expected with some degree of certainty." Socrates
defines EiKog as "likeness to truth."10
    Socrates' definition reveals a subtle point of great importance.
Likeness to truth is not the same thing as truth. Truth to the Greeks was only
what could be proved by logic and axioms. Their insistence on proof set
truth in direct contrast to empirical experimentation. For example, in
Phaedo, Simmias points out to Socrates that "the proposition that the
soul is in harmony has not been demonstrated at all but rests only on
probability." Aristotle complains about philosophers who, ". . . while
they speak plausibly, ...do not speak what is true." Elsewhere, Socrates anticipates Aristotle when he declares that a "mathematician who argues
from probabilities in geometry is not worth an ace."11 For another thousand years, thinking about games and playing them remained separate
activities.

    Shmuel Sambursky, a distinguished Israeli historian and philosopher
of science, provides the only convincing thesis I could find to explain
why the Greeks failed to take the strategic step of developing a quantitative approach to probability.12 With their sharp distinction between
truth and probability, Sambursky contends in a paper written in 1956,
the Greeks could not conceive of any kind of solid structure or harmony in the messy nature of day-to-day existence. Although Aristotle
suggested that people should make decisions on the basis of "desire and
reasoning directed to some end," he offered no guidance to the likelihood of a successful outcome. Greek dramas tell tale after tale of the
helplessness of human beings in the grasp of impersonal fates. When the
Greeks wanted a prediction of what tomorrow might bring, they
turned to the oracles instead of consulting their wisest philosophers.
    The Greeks believed that order is to be found only in the skies,
where the planets and stars regularly appear in their appointed places
with an unmatched regularity. To this harmonious performance, the
Greeks paid deep respect, and their mathematicians studied it intensely.
But the perfection of the heavens served only to highlight the disarray
of life on earth. Moreover, the predictability of the firmament contrasted sharply with the behavior of the fickle, foolish gods who dwelt
on high.
    The old Talmudic Jewish philosophers may have come a bit