[SystemSafety] Historical Questions

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2017-03-09 01:58 , paul_e.bennett at topmail.co.uk wrote:
> On 08/03/2017 at 11:50 PM, "Drew Rae" <d.rae at griffith.edu.au> wrote:
>> 1. When did people start talking about the importance of 
>> identifying hazards, assessing risks etc as general practices?
>>
>> 2. When did people start talking about not doing these things or 
>> doing them badly as a cause of accidents? 
> ....
> I wonder if this link might help........
> 
> <http://maritimeaccident.org/2008/12/history-of-maritime-accident-investigation-from-who-to-blame-to-how-to-stop-accidents/>

Supposing the history quoted in the link is correct (for me, a non-trivial supposition, since I am
largely ignorant of it), namely

[begin quote]
The maritime law of Rhodes, Lex Rhodian, laid down the principle of general average, which
determined who pay how much of the losses when a ship cames to grief.
[end quote]

then it indeed seems to be as old as Paul suggests.

I would suggest that concepts of risk concern (a) identifying stakeholders (people whose
life/business is affected if an event E happens) and (b) figuring out the loss (or gain) of each
stakeholder. Lex Rhodian apparently did that.

The modern concept of insurance dates from the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Peter Bernstein's
book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (John Wiley and Sons, 1996, 1998) is, well, a
book about the history of risk and well worth reading. Bernstein suggests on p126 that the "modern
concept of risk" was first defined by Abraham de Moivre (yes, he of the calculus theorem) in his
paper de Mensura Sortis of 1712 (published in the proceedings of the Royal Society. A commented copy
was published by Hald and McClintock in the International Statistical Review / Revue Internationale
de Statistique, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Dec., 1984), pp. 229-262. This is available from the archive JSTOR.

According to Bernstein, de Moivre says that "The Risk of losing any sum is the reverse of
Expectation; and the true measure of it is, the product of the Sum adventured multiplied by the
Probability of the Loss". However, I have been at a loss to find that in the Hald version of the paper.

The paper was published a quarter century after Edward Lloyd opened his coffee house near the
Thames, and six years after he started publishing his List of shipping schedules and maritime
situations.

I would imagine, following Paul's suggestion, that the concept of adverse-event investigation is at
least as old as any concept of risk. Certainly those stakeholders who lose from an event would want
to know why it happened, for two reasons: prophylaxis for the future (identify and avoid those
circumstances in your future dealings) and determining the magnitude of their individual loss
(arguing with other stakeholders that they should shoulder more of it and you less). I would guess
that those kinds of basic business dealings are as old as barter itself.

The 19th century does seem to me a bit late to start the history. Engineering risk (for example,
poorly designed or built ships) is possibly separable from general risk, which includes
environmental adversities (for example, storms at sea) and adversarial human acts (for example,
piracy; attacks by locals when in remote ports). But it is hard to imagine that the negotiators
around Lloyd's did not explicitly count seaworthiness of vessels in their judgements.

Summary: there is a continuity from ancient times.

PBL

Prof. i.R. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de





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