Leibniz's Doctrine of Chances

Leibniz's Doctrine of Chances is an early approach to probability, focusing on how likely an event is based on existing knowledge. It emphasizes that probability reflects our state of partial knowledge—not just the event's inherent randomness. For example, if you know the distribution of possible outcomes, Leibniz's approach helps assess the likelihood of a particular event occurring given that information. Essentially, it treats probability as a rational measure of uncertainty, updating as new evidence becomes available, and is foundational in understanding how we quantify and reason about uncertain situations.