Probability is [...] the philosophical success story of the first half of the twentieth century. To speak of philosophical success will seem the exaggeration of a scholar. Turn then to the most worldly affairs. Probability and statistics crowd in upon us. The statistics of our pleasures and our vices are relentlessly tabulated. Sports, sex, drink, drugs, travel, sleep, friends — nothing escapes. There are more explicit statements of probabilities presented on American prime time television than explicit acts of violence [...] Our public fears are endlessly debated in terms of probabilities: chances of meltdowns, caners, muggings, earthquakes, nuclear winters, AIDS, global greenhouses, what next? There is nothing to fear (it may seem) but the probabilities themselves. This obsession with the changes of danger, and with treatments for changing the odds, descends directly from the forgotten annals of nineteenth century information and control.

– Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance.