Bayesianism in the geosciences

Abstract

Bayesianism is currently one of the leading ways of scientific thinking. Due to its novelty, the paradigm still has many interpretations, in particular with regard to the notion of "prior distribution". In this chapter, Bayesianism is intro- duced within the historical context of the evolving notions of scientific reasoning such as inductionism, deductions, falsificationism and paradigms. From these notions, the current use of Bayesianism in the geosciences is elaborated from the viewpoint of uncertainty quantification, which has considerable relevance to practical applications of geosciences such as in oil/gas, groundwater, geothermal energy or contamination. The chapter concludes with some future perspectives on building realistic prior distributions for such applications.