When I wrote this essay for you, Bob — actually, during your Pittsburgh visit of 1987 — I certainly did not labor under the delusion that you have much of an interest in gambling. (So far as I know, you do not gamble at all.) But I did have in mind your long-standing interest in the era from Descartes to Newton, the starting-point of so much that is important in the development of European philosophy. It is in your role as an historian of ideas and as a connoisseur of strange twists in the development of philosophical issues that I offer this essay to you.