Richard Price: Statistical Theorist and Philosopher of Induction

Abstract: The unexpected appearance of an original offprint of Thomas Bayes's posthumous article that has come to be known as Bayes's Theorem has led to a reevaluation of Richard Price's role in preparing the paper for publication and of the motivation for its preparation and publication. It is argued that Price's motivation (and perhaps Bayes's as well) was explicitly David Hume's “Essay on Miracles,” and that Price was presenting this as a bold claim for the use of mathematical probability in induction. Price's offprint amounted to a bold claim that questions of induction and causation require an understanding of mathematical probability, essentially to the level of multivariate analysis, a premature wish in 1763 but a commonplace today.