The age of chance : gambling in western culture / Gerda Reith.
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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London ; New York :
Routledge,
1999.
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Table of Contents:
- List of illustrations
- Preface: Gambling, chance and the suspension of reality
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. The idea of chance
- The Age of Faith: the Origins of Chance
- The origins of chance
- Chance and divination
- Chance, fate and necessity
- Chance and Determinism
- An absent family of ideas
- An ancient family of ideas
- Reasons for the absent family
- The Renaissance
- The Age of Reason: the Birth of Probability
- Pascal
- 'There is no such thing as chance'
- Chance in Britain
- Caveat: the paradox of probability
- The Age of Chance: Chance and Modernity
- The birth of the average
- The mutation of determinism
- Chance as explanation
- The edge of chaos
- Risk
- 2. The pursuit of chance
- Gambling and Divination
- Sacred play
- Dice
- Cards
- Lots
- The Seventeenth-Century Explosion
- Speculation
- Betting
- Gambling
- Stratification and commercialisation
- 'The sport of kings'
- The Nineteenth Century: Playing with Numbers
- The casino
- Cards
- Roulette
- Dice
- Gaming machines
- Horses
- The new style of play
- Postscript: the Vortex of Vice
- 3. Playgrounds--a map of the modern gambling sites
- Modern Gambling
- The Map: a Typology of Gambling
- Skill and chance
- Rate of play
- Player relation to game
- Spatial organisation and social integration
- Player profile
- The Sites: Playgrounds
- The lottery
- Bingo
- Slot-machines
- The racecourse
- The bookmaker
- The casino
- www.casino.com
- 4. The experience of play
- The Experience of Play
- Excitement
- Boredom
- Repetition
- The Categories of Play
- Time
- Space
- Money
- The Varieties of Gambling Experience
- Unproductive expenditures
- Gambling, chance and status
- Play-in-itself
- 5. The magical-religious worldview
- The Rejection of Probability
- The Magical Worldview: Participation
- Dreams and omens
- Animism and the omnipotence of thought
- The belief in luck
- The Religious Worldview: Transcendence
- The dualism of luck
- Fate and destiny
- Epilogue
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index.