1. Probability and Chance, Fritz Mauthner's Studies of Improbability

You see, the probability of Faust coming into existence in the above way is not \(\frac{1}{6}\) or \(\frac{1}{36}\), and so on, but equals the fraction obtained by dividing \(1\) by \(100 \times 100 \times 100\), and so on, until we have done it \(300,000\) times. That is a fraction with a gigantic denominator, as you can see; in other words, the probability is exceedingly tiny. Mauthner continues, “We have here a fraction whose numerator is \(\)1, whose denominator consists of \(600,000\) digits. Even the conceptual power of the Indians,” (which Mauthner rates very highly), “even the mathematical genius of Archimedes is not up to grasping so vast a denominator. There is not even a name for such a number. The Greeks and the Romans were right, then, when they considered the chance production of any organized whole as extremely improbable. Here we reach the limits of the possible”—but only for human conceiving, he means. One cannot obtain Faust this way.