NAGEL, Ernest.

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Principles of the Theory of Probability. First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Professor Alonzo Church with cordial regards, Ernest Nagel".Church (1903-1995) taught philosophy and mathematics at Princeton from 1920 to 1967, where he made major contributions to mathematical logic and theoretical computer science. He worked closely with Nagel, professor at Columbia University, and the pair edited The Journal of Symbolic Logic from 1940 to 1945.In his Principles, "Nagel defended the frequency interpretation of probability. He made, however, a sustained effort to survey the various alternatives and to deal with many of the problems that have been raised about the frequency interpretation. He was perhaps the first American philosopher to call serious attention to the important method of arbitrary functions in probability theory that began with Poincaré and was extended by Eberhard Hopf, George D. Birkhoff and others. This approach, based on relatively straightforward principles of physical symmetry, as in the case of roulette or coin-flipping, provided a detailed account of observed probabilistic phenomena as recorded in relative frequencies" (ANB).

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