CHANCE

CHANCE , in the most general sense of the word, is the negation of necessity and the opposite of determinism. The word "chance," derived from the Latin cadere ("to fall"), has a wide spectrum of meanings encompassing randomness, probability, coincidence, contingence, fluke, accident, incident, fortuity, serendipity, hazard, risk, opportunity, luck, fortune, and fate. Many words related to chance, such as coincidence, contingence, or the German Zufall, indicate a binary structure, the coming together of two causally independent series of events. Something happens, or a certain situation or person is encountered by chance. (The word "incident" derives from Latin incidere, "to befall, to fall out.")

The awareness of chance is an integral part of worldviews, both indeterministic and deterministic. Chance may be regarded positively as "an essential aspect of any real process" (Bohm, p. 141); negatively as the lack of causality or knowledge of such; and neutrally as the law of probability.

To some, chance denotes human freedom, but to others, fate. Chance can be haphazard; it can be fortunate or unfortunate. It is a highly equivocal, bifacial term, in that one meaning can easily turn into its opposite. This ambivalence may be traced back to the essential unpredictability and unknowability of any happening. The insurance business, for instance, rests on its customers' belief in chance (in the sense of unpredictability), but itself uses the theory of chance—that is, probability—to calculate its risks and price its policies (see Knight).

Although in the early twenty-first century the theory of probability predicts the course of class events to a great extent, the ultimate unknowability and uncertainty of individual events can never vanish from the realm of human experience (see Von Mises). This persistent presence of chance elements can be argued from the contingent nature of one's existence or from free will. Again, the uncertainty and indeterminateness of reality can be the source of inspiration for art or enterprise. The spirit of gambling, for instance, deliberately creates uncertain situations for the enjoyment of the risks themselves (see Rothbard, p. 500).

Chance, Greek views

Dante noted that Democritus "ascribes the world to chance" (Inferno 4.136; cf. Cioffari, chap. 1). Aristotle also observed that for Democritus the cosmos was ordered by chance (automaton ), that is, out of itself (auto ) without any reason or purpose (maton ). (For the etymology of automaton, see Physics 197b.) In opposition to this view of chance as a spontaneous event, or as "a cause that is inscrutable to human intelligence, as being a divine thing and full of mystery" (Physics 196b), Aristotle considered chance (tuchē and automaton ) as an accidental cause of the "efficient order" and what happens "by accident" (kata sumbebēkos ). Chance is indeterminate, changeful, and unstable. It is whatever comes about, neither always nor usually, but rarely (Metaphysics 1026b–1027a, 1065a; Physics 196b–198a).

Aristotle moreover distinguished two types of chance events, tuchē and automaton. Illustrating this distinction, Alexander of Aphrodisias, a third-century commentator, gave the example of a lost horse recovered by chance by his former owner. For the owner, the event is fortunate (tuchē ), but for the horse it is simply fortuitous (automaton ). Automaton has a broader range of meanings than tuchē, as it is applicable both to the natural and human worlds, whereas tuchē applies only to the latter (see Kuki, pp. 63–67).

Regarding luck and chance, Aristotle observed: "We speak of 'good luck' when luck brings us something good, and 'bad luck' in the opposite event, or, in serious cases, of 'good fortune' [eutuchia ] or 'misfortune' [dustuchia ]" (Physics 197a). Good fortune or chance for Aristotle comprised such qualities as noble birth, good children, wealth, political power, friends, and beauty (cf. Rhetoric 1389a). Fortune or chance is the cause of these external goods (Politics 1322b). The ethical virtues of justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom, however, lie outside the realm of chance, that is, within human control (cf. Politics 1323a).

The Greek word for chance, tuchē, contains the long history of poets' and writers' reflections on the subjects of luck, fate, the vicissitudes of life, and the gods' share in such human events. For Pindar, Soteira Tyche (Fortune the Savior) is "heaven-sent good fortune," the "kindly power who may crown the efforts of man" (Greene, pp. 72–73). Plato talked about a theia tuchē, a divine chance (Timaeus 25e), who comes to save human beings from their folly. Many Greeks worshipped Agathe Tyche, the goddess of good fortune (Timaeus 26e; Greene, p. 299). Aristotle admitted that chance has a religio-ethical significance in that fortune and happiness (eudaimonia ) are often synonymous, that "happiness is a divine gift" (Nicomachean Ethics 1099b; Greene, p. 325), and that "the lucky seem to succeed owing to God" (Ethica Eudemia 1248b; Cioffari, p. 27).

But Goddess Tyche is not always benevolent or dependable. Archilochus (c. 700–650 bce) is said to have introduced the idea of tuchē into the discourse, along with the already familiar Homeric notion of moira (fate), to account for what controlled human destiny. According to Orphic doctrines, fate was the law that controlled the conditions of human beings' birth, death, and reincarnation, but by the fifth and fourth centuries bce, goddess Tyche became increasingly important. An anonymous poet wrote: "Fortune [Tyche], beginning and end of human beings. Thou sittest in the seats of wisdom, and grantest honor to human deeds … thou most excellent of gods" (Loeb ed., Lyra Graeca, vol. 3, p. 477). In Greek tragedies, the role of tuchē was considerable. Euripides's Ion exclaims: "O Tyche, thou who hast brought change to myriads of human beings, causing them now to suffer misfortune, and now to fare well, by what a narrow margin have I escaped slaying my mother!" (Euripides, Ion 1512–1515). Tyche, as the goddess of chance, was associated with Lachesis, one of the Moirai (Fates) and the "dispenser of human lots" (Hesiod), and took on a fickle, unpredictable character.

Chance, the Roman view

The cult of the native Italian goddess Fortuna was revived when she was identified with Tyche. Pliny the Elder noted:

Everywhere in the whole world, at every hour by everyone's voices Fortuna alone is invoked and named, alone accused, alone impeached, alone pondered, alone applauded, alone rebuked and visited with reproaches; deemed volatile and indeed by most people blind as well, wayward, inconstant, uncertain, fickle in her favors and favoring the unworthy.… We are so much at the mercy of chance that Chance herself takes the place of god. (Natural History 2.22)

The belief in Fortuna persisted well into Renaissance Europe; she was often depicted with wings, bearing a rudder and wheel, symbolizing swiftly changing fortune.

Chance in Christianity and rationalist philosophy

Christian views on chance vary somewhat. Whereas Augustine denied any possibility of chance or fortune in view of all-controlling providence (City of God 5.1), Aquinas admitted chance (contingens ) within the providential scheme. Things "happen necessarily or contingently according to God's will" (Summa theologiae 1.19.8).

Spinoza spoke of chance "with reference to a deficiency in our knowledge [of the cause]" (Ethics 1.33.1); likewise, Laplace took it as the expression of "our ignorance as to the causes of phenomena." Hume declared that "there is no such thing as chance," but "our ignorance of the real cause of any event begets this sort of belief or opinion" (Concerning Human Understanding 6). Chance thus understood has merely a subjective reality. Leibniz, on the other hand, considered the world as "the whole assemblage of contingent things" that has its necessary and eternal substance (i.e., God) for its existence ("Essays on the Justice of God and the Freedom of Man in the Origin of Evil," 1.7); also he distinguished two kinds of truths and held that "truths of fact are contingent," while "truths of reasoning are necessary" (Monadology 33).

Chance as serendipity

In opposition to the mechanical necessitarianists of the late nineteenth century, C. S. Peirce developed a philosophical position that he called "tychism." It preserves the necessary presence of chance (Gr., tuchē), "a spontaneity which is to some degree regular," in the evolutionary process of the world, and this accounts for the individual specification (1923, pp. 200–201). Max Born, from the standpoint of quantum mechanics, likewise took chance to be mixed with "certain regularities," and nature to be "ruled by laws of cause and laws of chance." Distinguishing causality from determinism, Born incorporated chance into the consideration of causality, and thereby gave quantum mechanics indeterministic foundations (cf. Heisenberg's "principle of indeterminacy" or Niels Bohr's "principle of complementarity"). This indeterministic position was rejected by Einstein, who was convinced that God was not a "dice-playing God" (Born, pp. 3, 109, 122–123). The Nobel laureate biologist Jacques Monod declared that "chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere" (p. 112). Objectors to this view hold that Monod's equation of "chance and man's freedom to choose his own ethical value" is erroneous (see MacKay, p. 31), or that "physico-chemical determinism" is not synonymous with the "absence of choice and freedom" (Schoffeniels, p. xix).

Not only the old question of divine providence, human freedom and chance, but the question of scientific discoveries and their philosophical implications occupy the contemporary mind. The current trend is in agreement with the worldview that is fast moving towards indeterminism, and chance, understood as serendipity, is considered instrumental in biological and other scientific discoveries and breakthroughs (see works by J. H. Austin and A. Kantorovich, for instance).

Radical contingency: A Buddhist view

The Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-origination (pratītya-samutpāda ) may be interpreted as a theory of radical contingency. It holds that there are "no accidental occurrences" and that everything in the world is produced "causally conditioned." Buddhists deny any theory of creation by a transcendental agent or anything such as fate. Moreover, things, causally produced in this fashion, have no "self-nature" (svabhāva ). This view diametrically opposed the determinism of the Indian materialists, the Ājīvikas, as well as the syncretic view of the theory of inner and outer causation held by Jains (see Kalupahana).

From a certain perspective, this Buddhist doctrine appears to be a deterministic view in that it asserts that everything is subject to the law of causation. But from a reverse perspective, the convergence of causal factors is thoroughly indeterminate; it rests on a radical contingence of various factors, both of the spatio-temporal and psycho-mental nature. Innumerable conditioning elements come together in the arising of a single event at each moment.

Jung's view on synchronicity

C. G. Jung coined the term "synchronicity" to designate the phenomenon of the coincidence of events and subjective psychic states. It "takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers" (1967, p. xxiv). Jung was inclined to value the "practical result of chance" more highly than the "theoretical considerations of cause and effect" (p. xxiii), and hence, "we must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance" (ibid., p. xxiv).

Divination

Belief in fortune opens the way for divination. Throughout the history of humankind, recourse to divination has been practiced in times of trouble or uncertainty. Divination was originally a means to obtain answers to questions that are insoluble by rational reasoning. A story is recorded in Plutarch of the successor to the throne of the Thessalian kingdom being chosen by casting lots at Delphi. In Shang China, divination originated in a human attempt to fathom the mind of the deity; during the Zhou period the art of divination was given philosophical foundation (see The Book of Changes or Yijing ). In Japan well into the thirteenth century, shrine virgins known as saigū, who served at the most auspicious shrine of all, the Ise Shrine, were chosen from among eligible princesses by divination.

It appears that only later did divination come to be interpreted as dealing with chance or randomness. It is noteworthy in this connection that Apollo, the Greek god of knowledge, despised the uncertainty of the lot and handed over the divination dealing with the chances of the dice to Hermes, who thus became the gambler's god.

Belief in chance has a double role to play in the practice of divination—in the method (as the principle of randomness) and in the interpretation (as the principle of coincidence). A deterministic worldview that negates chance can nevertheless employ divination. For example, an African system of divination, Ifa, is based on the assumption that individuals basically cannot change their own destiny, but just as they can spoil it to a degree, so can the practice of Ifa improve it. Even Stoics, who were thoroughgoing determinists, eagerly sought knowledge of the future that fell outside the prediction of scientists, physicians, and other experts. The harmony between the human soul and the divine soul provided them with the basis for divination as a means of communication with God in order that human beings "might know the divine will in advance and obey it" (William A. Falconer, introduction to Cicero's De divinatione, Loeb ed., 1923, p. 216).

Like the widely practiced throwing of pebbles or stones for divinatory purposes, the method of the Chinese yijing divination consists in casting yarrow stalks (or coins) to yield randomly determined odd or even numbers. The philosophers of the later Song period maintained that this randomness was essential, for "some truths could only be sought by means of the random cast of the stalks and the evolution of the all-informing hexagram; this was achieved by means that were anything but systematic or responsive to reason" (Loewe, in Loewe and Blacker, p. 52).

Be it bibliomancy, a random opening of books such as the Bible, the Qurʾān, or Vergil's Aeneid; rhapsodomancy, which consists in writing out passages from books on separate slips and drawing one of them at random; or kledonomancy, appealing to a chance word overheard—all rest on randomness as the vehicle. (Incidentally, the Latin word for fate, fatum, comes from for, "to speak," "to say." Fatum is "what is said.") As chance is unknowable in essence, so does randomness, a form of chance, appear as an appropriate means to grasp the unknown. The mathematical doctrine of chance can be applied to calculating the outcome of random throwing of dice, for instance, but it does not replace the purpose of divination, which is to provide an answer to a question brought to it.

A skilled interpretation of such signs as those mentioned above is of central importance for divination and may be said to rely on the principle of coincidence or correspondence, according to which signs are somehow related to the human situation under consideration. It is assumed not only that there is a certain correspondence between the method of divination and the meaning obtained through it but that there is a correspondence between human affairs and the larger cosmic movement (as in, for example, The Book of Changes ) or the divine will. "The casting of lots is familiar in the Old and New Testaments as a method of ascertaining divine will" (Halliday, p. 206; cf. Jos. 6:14, Jon. 1:17, Acts 1:26, Prv. 16:33), and a divinatory message was regarded as sacred and mysterious (Prv. 16:10).

Miracle

An extremely rare or unusual occurrence may be considered a miracle. Aquinas summarized the traditional Christian understanding of miracle as: "When anything is done outside the order of created nature by a power unknown to us, it is called a miracle as regards ourselves" (Summa theologiae 1.110.4.2). He argued that just as ignorance of the cause is the source of amazement, so also when the cause is completely hidden, as God is, a thing is wondrous in an unqualified way, and this is a miracle—"what is of itself filled with admirable wonder" (Summa contra gentiles 3.101; cf. Augustine, City of God 21.8). For Hume, who denied chance, a miracle is "a violation of the laws of nature" supported by human testimony and sustained by belief (Concerning Human Understanding 10). Over against the Humean interpretation, Peirce found Butler's position that "the order of nature is a law to the doctrine of miracles" to affirm miracles and to be "in consonance with the higher teachings of modern science" ("Hume on Miracles," Collected Papers 6.546–547). Contemporary theists argue that a "dynamically stable world," which embraces chance, affords the possibility of miracles.

Chance and the unknown

Chance events, beyond human ratiocination and calculations, disclose the radical uncertainty present at the heart of reality. The interpretation of chance depends on whether one's worldview is religious or nonreligious. The fundamental unknowability of events—their mystery—can inspire awe. The religious mind has perceived in chance something sacred or a manifestation of the divine will. Some have placed chance within the governance of divine providence. Others reject it in deference to the same divine providence, arguing that what happens has already been determined by the transcendent scheme. Hence a seemingly chance occurrence, either fortunate or unfortunate, takes on the meaning of fate. In contrast, chance seen as pointing out the utter indeterminateness of things would signify the presence of free will. From a strictly fatalistic point of view, of course, there is no room for chance, for everything is already predetermined prior to the occurrence of events, and everything is already fated. Chance and fate—these initially contradictory notions are but two counter-interpretations of the experience of unexpected coincidence or happenings that seem arbitrary but nevertheless have a decisive impact on one's life and in some cases totally change it.

See Also

Divination; Fate; Gambling; Miracles; Pratītya-samutpāda.

Bibliography

Comprehensive works on chance in English are few. In other languages, one may profitably consult Kuki Shūzō's Gūzensei no mondai [The problem of contingency] (1935; Tokyo, 1976), translated as Le problème de la contingence (Tokyo, 1966), and Wilhelm Windelband's Die Lehren vom Zufall (Berlin, 1870).

On the economic theory of risk, probability, and uncertainty, see Frank H. Knight's Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (New York, 1921). On the distinction between "class probability" and "actual singular events," see Ludwig Von Mises's Human Action, 3d rev. ed. (Chicago, 1963), and M. N. Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1962).

For a popular, readable introduction to the laws of chance and probability, see Darrell Huff's How to Take a Chance (New York, 1959), and Deborah J. Bennett, Randomness (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, 1998). For a philosophical treatment of this subject, see D. H. Mellor's The Matter of Chance (Cambridge, 1971).

On the ancient Greek view of chance and fate, see William C. Greene's Moira: Fate, Good and Evil in Greek Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1944). On Aristotle and the Scholastics, see Vincenzo Cioffari's Fortune and Fate: From Democritus to St. Thomas Aquinas (New York, 1935). On Leibniz's view of contingency, see Theodicy (London, 1951); also "Monadology" in Leroy E. Loemker, trans. & ed., Philosophical Papers and Letters (Chicago, 1956). For C. S. Peirce's philosophy of chance, see his Chance, Love and Logic (1923; New York, 1949).

On the Buddhist view of chance and causation, see David J. Kalupahana's Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (Honolulu, 1975); G. C. Pande, "Causality in Buddhist Philosophy," Eliot Deutsche & Ron Bontekoe, ed., A Companion to World Philosophies (Oxford, 1997), pp. 370–380.

For a contemporary view of chance from a scientific perspective, see Max Born's Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (Oxford, 1951) and David Bohm's Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Princeton, 1957). Jacques Monod's position is stated in his Chance and Necessity (New York, 1971), and Ernest Schoffeniels's critique is in his Anti-Chance (Oxford, 1976). On the role of serendipity in scientific discoveries, see James H. Austin, Chase, Chance, and Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty (New York, 1978), and Aharon Kantorovich, Scientific Discovery: Logic and Tinkering (Albany, N.Y., 1993).

For a theistic position on chance, see Donald M. MacKay's Science, Chance, and Providence (Oxford, 1978), and William G. Pollard's Chance and Providence (New York, 1958).

On divination, see Greek Divination by W. R. Halliday (1913; Chicago, 1967); Oracles and Divination, edited by Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker (New York, 1981), contains a wide range of material from many cultures.

On the idea of synchronicity, see C. G. Jung's foreword to The I Ching [Yijing ], or Book of Changes, 3d ed., translated by Cary F. Baynes (Princeton, 1967), and Jung's essays "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle" and "On Synchronicity," in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 2d ed. (Princeton, 1969), vol. 8 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung.

On miracles, see Antony Flew's "Miracles," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Paul Edwards (New York, 1967), vol. 5, and C. S. Peirce's "Hume on Miracles," in the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), vol. 6. Richard Swinburne's The Concept of Miracle (London, 1970) deals with the problem from the standpoint of philosophy of religion.

Michiko Yusa (1987 and 2005)