a. Now rare or Obs. [ad. Gr. στοχαστικός, f. στοχάζεσθαι to aim at a mark, guess, f. στόχος aim, guess.] Pertaining to conjecture.
1662. J. Owen, Animadv. on Fiat Lux, Pref. 4. But yet there wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick [sic] faculty.
17[?]. J. Whitefoot, in Sir J. Browne’s Wks. (1712), I. p. xxxvii. Tho’ he [Browne] were no Prophet,… yet in that Faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i.e. the Stochastick, wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future Events.
1720. Swift, Right of Preced. betw. Physicians & Civilians, 11. I am Master of the Stochastick Art, and by Virtue of that, I divine, that those Greek Words … have crept from the Margin into the Text.
Hence † Stochastical a. in the same sense; † Stochastically adv.
a. 1688. Cudworth, Freewill (1838), 39. We … may and often do proceed to making a judgment in the case one way or other, stochastically or conjecturally. Ibid., 40. There is need and use of this stochastical judging and opining concerning truth and falsehood in human life.
