b. Madrid, Spain 23 May 1606
d. Vigevano, Italy 8 September 1682
Caramuel
was a member of the
Cistercian Order who held a number of positions in the Catholic church
including the office of bishop. Nicolas Bernoulli mistakenly states
that he was a Jesuit. Many works are credited to him over a broad range
of topics including mathematics. Of these, of greatest interest in the
history of probability is
Mathesis
biceps: Vetus et nova,
published at Campagna in 1670.
An examination of its
table
of contents shows that
it is a summary of the mathematical and
technical knowledge of the time.
Section 6
concerns
Combinatorial mathematics and subsequently games and lotteries. Here is
reproduced the Subsection entitled KYBEIA. Nicolas Bernoulli is
critical of the work saying that it is full of circumlocutions.
This text has been modernized slightly and obvious corrections inserted
without notice in the few places where errors have occured in printing.
The typesetter often used contractions to fit words to a line. Thus
"quisq;" becomes "quisque" and "oblectădum" becomes
"oblectandum." Where Caramuel prints greek words with latin letters, we
have returned to the greek.
- A transcription
of sections XLIX to
LXXVIII.
- A transcription of the DIATRIBE,
section LXXXIX. This is a reprinting of Huygen's De Ratiociniis in Alea.
Several
translations into English are available for which see the Huygens.
