Figures of Chance II: Chance in Theory and Practice

Figures of Chance II: Chance in Theory and Practice proposes a multidisciplinary analysis of cultural phenomena related to notions of chance and contingency. Alongside its transhistorical companion volume (Figures of Chance I), it considers how the projective and predictive capacity of societies is shaped by representations and cultural models of a reality that is understood, by varying degrees, to be contingent, unpredictable, or chaotic. This volume reevaluates the role played by figurative representations of chance in contemporary discourses about chance and contingency. Written by seven interdisciplinary teams, and encompassing philosophy, literature, history of science, sociology, mathematics, cognitive science, information science, and art history, this text puts scientific conceptions of chance into dialogue with their contemporary literary and artistic representations. It thus brings out the central role played by art in the human perception of chance, and in our methods for projecting the future, in order to better understand contemporary human attitudes in the face of risk.

The Introduction and Chapter One of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Anne Duprat is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Picardy Jules Verne and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. As Principal Investigator on the ALEA project supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), she edited and coordinated the two volumes of Figures of Chance.

Alison James is Professor of French Literature and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. She co-edited the second volume of Figures of Chance and helped prepare the English version of the first volume.