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

And on what do they base this judgment? They say, When we survey the whole range of philosophical thought, the philosophical procedure followed by many philosophers (and Mauthner has really sat down and studied the world's philosophers and is as familiar with all of them as anyone can be in a single lifetime), we see what trouble they took to arrive at concepts. But all these are just human concepts; they can't be applied to reality. There is no reality in the concept of divine providence. And Mauthner's article on chance ends with the statement that divine providence, the cosmic order, cosmic harmony, and the beauty of the world used to be looked upon as concepts in the following context: “Yes, there are elements of chance in the world, but the world is also endowed with order and beauty.” And Mauthner ends: “But we realize that the concept of chance is man-made, and so are the concepts of beauty and order, of God, of causality.” We know, in other words, that they are all of human origin and lack objective applicability. “Thus it is the height of literal-mindedness even to ask the question whether chance or God is the origin of universal order and beauty, and worse to try to answer it with a childish simile.”