Quotes about Chance

The world is not an organism at all, but chaos.

Friedrich Nietzsche: The Will to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 379. [@ William Desmond: Art and the Absolute. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York, 1986), p.193, n. 25.]

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Das Wirkliche ist zufällig.

Mauthner: Kritik der Sprache, Vol. 3, p. 579. [Dit lijkt veel op een opmerking in het begin van de Tractatus. Opzoeken.]

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Es gibt kein Zufälle. Ein Tür kann zufallen aber das ist kein Zufall, sondern ein bewusster Erlebnis der Tür, die Tür, der Tür . . .

Kurt Schwitters: "Lieschen." [@ Hoos Blotkamp: "Dada en Toeval" (Tentoonstellingscatalogus Toeval (RUU, 1972), p. bk.III.1.]

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It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.

Poincaré. [@ Thomas A. Bass: The Eudaemonic Pie (New York: Vintage Books: 1986), p. 188. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985)]

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"Es wäre gar nichts geschehen, wenn nicht . . ."

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 31.

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Thus, bringing together the rigor of scientific demonstration and the uncertainty of chance, and reconciling those things which are in appearance contrary to each other, this art can derive its name from both and justly assume the astounding title of the Mathematics of Chance.

Blaise Pascal. [@ Thomas A. Bass: The Eudaemonic Pie (New York: Vintage Books: 1986), p. 118. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985)]

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J. Piaget and B. Inhelder: La Genèse de l'Idée de Hasard chez l'Enfant (Paris: PUF, 1951).

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Chance seemst to be only a term, by which we express our ignorance of the cause of any thing.

Wollaston: Relig. Nat. V. 83 (1722).

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The ancients, struck with this irreducibleness of the elements of human life to calculation, exalted chance into a divinity.

Emerson: Ess. xiv. Wks (Bohm), 1841-1844.

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It is incorrect to say that any phenomenon is produced by chance; but we may say that two or more phenomena are conjoioned by chance . . . meaning that they are in no way related through causation.

Mill: Logic III, xvii, § 2 (1846).

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. . . the ymage in hys slep told hym hys cheance.

R. Glouc. (1297).

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Opzoeken bij Demokrites: het klinamen (de toevallige afwijking van een deeltje van zijn voorgeschreven baan). Cf. kwanten-mechanica.