``It is like gaming'' -- Nicole Oresme and his contribution in the prehistory of stochastics (Q5945511)

The author discusses Oresme's ``\textit{De proportionibus proportionum}'' and ``\textit{Ad pauca respicientes}'' (Latin-English edition by E. Grant, Madison-London (1966)). He expounds Oresme's notion of commensurability and use of ``rations'' (relations rather than quantities) which led him to the introduction of positive fractional exponents and he attributes to Oresme an actual understanding of probability, both epistemic and aleatory, and an elementary scale of the probable. It is difficult to say what exactly is now in this paper. In any case even the Talmud stipulated the ratios of forbidden/allowed food in mixtures, i.e., the corresponding numerical probabilities, whereas scales of logical or subjective probabilities go back to Aristotle.