Half way on the road, I will now give a small review of the book "Philosophical Theories of Probability" by Donald Gillies

Departing from the origins of P() theory in the 17then century, the book opens the classical theory with the analogy of Laplace's demon. For Laplace the world is inherently causal and mechanistic. God gave us limited senses and mind to fully understand the chain of causality a phenomena must obey, thus probability is a workaround to our limited capabilities to be able to uncover at least some mechanics and achieve some securities in an over-complex world. If a being, the said demon, would exist, which is able to observe the whole universe from begin of the world on, this being would be able to predict every future event in this universe and probabilities would not matter to him.

The classical theory views the world as a deterministic system, probabilities cannot be inherent in objective nature but must be relative to human ignorance.

Laplace believes that in an experiment we must regard every outcome as equally possible, since we cannot know better. The classical formula therefore is P(E)= m/n. The probability of outcome E is the fraction of favorable cases to E, m, and all possible cases n.

We enter 20thies century probability with pre First World War England. But frankly next week :-)

http://books.google.at/books?id=wFFK_P8Cpk0C What struck me at first glance was the evidence of a second close relationship to economics; as the famous J.M. Keynes contributed to a new interpretation of probability "the logical theory", it is also interesting that Richard von Mises was the brother of the important exponent of the Austrian School of economics, Ludwig von Mises

http://books.google.at/books?id=iBKGXi1GpNkC&printsec=frontcover

The first known works on probability theory are these of Galileo and Pascal. In both cases it is notable that they where commissional work for wealthy gamblers. The autor argues that the investment of the gambling culture led to the establisment of this branch of mathematics.

The compulsive gamblers who spent hours studying the outcome of experimental trials with these pieces of apparatus [e.g. dices and decks of cards] were in effect scientists conducting a careful examination of the phenomenon of chance and randomness

He wonders why there is no knowledge of ancient greek lore in this field, since the greek and roman culture had a lot of fortune games such as dices.

The first unified theory - mainly a summary of the works of his prdecessors Gauss, Bernoulli and Pascal - was Laplace's A Philosopical Essay on Probabilities. A early social statistical method was developed by John Graunt in his Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality

Interesting Hippie Shit:

A simple approach to collaborative work which enables groups of people (5-2500) to confront and resolve highly complex and conflicted issues. The agenda is established entirely by the participants and the total process is essentially self organizing. A single facilitator is required to initiate and conclude the process, but this facilitator is largely invisable during the course of the gathering, and in no case does he or she intervene in the actual working sessions. OST was developed in 1985 by Harrison Owen and subsequently has been used in excess of 100,000 times in 132 countries for purposes as various as peacemaking in the middle east, corporate strategic planning, community project design, and many others. Open Space is free (not trademarked or copyrighted).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology