This article integrates the history of military theory - and the practical history of military campaigns and battles - within the broader history of knowledge. Challenging ideas that the new natural philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the so-called Scientific Revolution) fostered attempts to make warfare mathematically calculated, it builds on work showing that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy was itself much more subjective than previously thought. It uses the figure of King Frederick II of Prussia (reigned 1740-1786) to link theoretical with practical military knowledge, placing the military treatises read and written by the king alongside the practical example of the Prussian army's campaign against the Russians in summer 1758 at the height of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), which culminated in the battle of Zorndorf. This article shows that both the theory and practice of war - like other branches of knowledge in the long eighteenth century - were fundamentally shaped by the contemporary search for intellectual order. The inability to achieve this in practice led to a reliance on subjective judgment and individual, local knowledge. Whereas historians have noted attempts in the eighteenth century to calculate probabilities mathematically, this article shows that war continued to be conceived as the domain of fortune, subject to incalculable chance. Answering Steven Shapin's call to define concretely "the subjective element in knowledge-making," the examples of Frederick and his subordinate, Lieutenant General Count Christoph zu Dohna, reveal sharply different contemporary ideas about how to respond to uncertainty in war. Whereas Dohna sought to be ready for chance events and react to them, Frederick actively embraced uncertainty and risk-taking, making chance both a rhetorical argument and a positive choice guiding strategy and tactics.

中文翻译：

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战争的主观实践：普鲁士军队和佐恩多夫战役，1758 年

本文将军事理论史——以及军事战役和战斗的实践史——整合到更广泛的知识史中。挑战 17 和 18 世纪的新自然哲学（所谓的科学革命）促进了对战争进行数学计算的尝试，它建立在表明 17 和 18 世纪自然哲学本身比以前主观得多的工作的基础上想法。它使用普鲁士国王腓特烈二世（1740-1786 年在位）的形象将理论与实际军事知识联系起来，将国王阅读和撰写的军事论文与 1758 年夏季普鲁士军队对俄国人作战的实际例子放在一起七年战争（1756-1763）的高峰期，最终在佐恩多夫战役中达到高潮。这篇文章表明，战争的理论和实践——就像漫长的 18 世纪的其他知识分支一样——从根本上受到了当代对知识秩序的追求的影响。在实践中无法实现这一点导致依赖主观判断和个人、当地知识。尽管历史学家注意到 18 世纪曾尝试以数学方式计算概率，但本文表明，战争继续被视为命运的领域，受制于不可估量的机会。为了响应史蒂文·沙平的号召，具体定义“知识创造中的主观因素”，弗雷德里克及其下属克里斯托夫·祖·多纳伯爵中将的例子，揭示了关于如何应对战争中的不确定性的截然不同的当代观念。Dohna 试图为偶然事件做好准备并对其做出反应，而 Frederick 则积极接受不确定性和冒险精神，使机会既是一种修辞论据，也是一种指导战略和战术的积极选择。