Conceptual and Historical Reflections on Chance (and Related Concepts)

Abstract

In everyday language, the use of such words as “chance,” “coincidence,” “luck,” “fortune” or “randomness” strongly overlap. In fact, in some languages, such as German, they coincide in one word (Zufall). In others, there is a clear separation between chance events with positive connotations (e.g., “luck,” “fortune”) and those with bad ones (e.g., “accident,” “hazard”). In this essay, we try to sketch the main lines of development of several of these concepts from the ancient Greeks up to modern times, or more precisely, from Democritus and Aristotle up to the world of quantum mechanics. Three elements emerge with particular force. First, “chance,” “fortune,” “randomness,” etc. are in some instances invoked as explanations of events, but in others designate events that occur without an explanations. Second, the meaning of these terms only becomes clear when one understands which alternatives they exclude. Finally, it is conspicuous to see how, after a rigid exclusion of “chance” or “randomness” from the domain of scientific explanation in the early modern period, they were restored to full glory in nineteenth- and twentieth-century biology and physics.