Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s‘Essays on Moral Arithmetic’

We offer a translation into English of the original French version published in 1777 of Buffon’s Essai d’Arithmetique Morale along with some introductory remarks. In this classic work, Buffon discusses degrees of certainty, probability, the moral value of money, the different evaluations of " gains and of losses; moreover, he proposes repeated experiments to" determine the moral value of a game. Our hope is that this remarkable work, which anticipates and relates to many aspects discussed in more recent literature, reaches a broader audience than the French original reaches today. Our belief is that we are first to translate this classic work completely.