The discussion of the early modern "probabilistic revolution" in the history of science has now reached a very high level.
Even if it remains controversial where exactly the first formulations of modern probability theory are found and where the modern mathematical concept of probability is first developed, it is largely undisputed that these advances in the calculus and concept of mathematical probability are a phenomenon of the second half of the 17th century. Of the many strands of tradition and motivational bases cited for the "emergence" of mathematical probability in the late 17th century in the current research literature, many derive from precisely those "human science" disciplines that have been greatly eclipsed in recent discussions of the history of science.2 Highlighted in recent research are, above all, the rhetorical traditions of establishing plausibility by reference to majority opinion and expert opinion, the legal traditions of weighing evidence and assessing testimony, the medical sign doctrines and medical theories of the diagnostic certainty of symptomatic inferences, finally, the theological traditions of weighting conflicting doctrinal authorities, the post-Tridentine dispute over the (justificatory) foundations of the Christian faith, and the discussion of the epistemic status of testimony about miracles.
The development of the concept of probability has already been comprehensively appreciated in the context of the study of the history of science of mathematics and empirical natural sciences. For the disciplines concerned with the interpretation of signs and testimonies in the early modern period (including theology, historiography, jurisprudence, medicine, but also logic and rhetoric), such integrative studies in the history of science have generally been omitted. The transfer of knowledge from the "human sciences" to the natural sciences, insofar as its attention has seemed useful to a historical reconstruction of the mathematization of probability, has become the subject of sophisticated investigations. The question, however, whether there was an inverse transfer of knowledge from the natural sciences to the "human sciences" has hardly become the subject of far-reaching attempts to answer. Against this background, it is not surprising that the relationship between early modern notions of probability in the sciences (both natural and human) and in the arts has not attracted much academic attention. For instance, the question of whether insightful connections between scientific and poetological conceptions of probability can be traced for the early modern period is still not adequately resolved.
Elena Esposito's essay on Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität (the fiction of probable reality) can therefore only arouse great curiosity in this research situation; it promises, first, to demonstrate that epistemological and poetological conceptions of probability can be systematically related to each other, and second, to show that epistemological and poetological conceptions of probability emerge in the same period (namely, the second half of the seventeenth century) in their specifically modern manifestation and owe their emergence to the same socio-historical framework. Should these assessments prove to be correct and well-founded, much would be gained for the study of the early modern poetological concept of probability. Within the framework of the increasingly dynamic research program of a consistent historicization of the basic categories of literary theory (author, text, work, reader, fiction, literature, etc.), Esposito's history of the emergence of the modern poetological concept of probability would then undoubtedly occupy a prominent place.
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SPOERHASE, Carlos, 2009. Eine verpasste Chance [Elena Esposito, Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität, 2007.]. JLTonline Reviews. Online. 5 March 2009. No. 0. [Accessed 30 January 2023]. Available from: http://www.jltonline.de/index.php/reviews/article/view/21