Saturday, May 17, 2008

Probable Origin of Term "Circumstantial"

James Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal 32 (Johns Hopkins, 2001) (footnote omitted):
[Baldus de Ubaldis, in his late fourteenth century commentaries] mentions a kind of presumption called circumferent, which proves only when collected with others, apparently the origin of modern "circumstantial" evidence.

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