Cournot, Antoine Augustin
Cournot, Antoine Augustin
(1801-1877) French mathematician, economist, and philosopher, is best known for his interest in probability. His philosophical writings, long neglected, reflect disagreement both with the positivism of his own day and with the earlier French rationalism. His place between the two is manifest in his doctrine that order and contingency, continuity and discontinuity, are equally real. This metaphysical position led him to conclude that man, though he cannot attain certain truth of nature, can by increasing the probable truth of his statements approach this truth. Cournot’s mathematical investigations into probability and his mathematical treatment of economics thus harmonize with his metaphysics and epistemology. Main works
Exposition de la theorie des chances et des probabdites, 1843;
Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance, 2 vols. 1851;
Consid. sur les marches des idees, 1872;
Materialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalism, 1875;
Traite de l’Enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire, 1881.
— C.K.D.