In 1738, the Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli argued that a gift of 10 ducats has the same utility to someone who already has 100 ducats as a gift of 20 ducats to someone whose current wealth is 200 ducats.
It was one of the earliest known efforts to look at the relationship between mind and matter -- between the magnitude of a stimulus and the intensity or quality of subjective experience. And it tells us something about how people make choices between gambles and sure things.
