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

So one can take neither God nor “His Majesty, Chance” for granted. Mauthner therefore maintains that neither has validity, that all that is involved here is just concepts in language, and people deal with them as they do with languages themselves and with translations. And he calls this a Critique of Language! We have here a truly incisive train of thought indeed, pursued with a great deal of effort. It leads to two alternatives: one has either to presuppose that the world came into being by chance—an exceedingly tiny probability, of course—or, still less credibly, to conceive of a kind God with a head so full of wisdom that He could use it to build a world out of chaos.