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Randomness and Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

J. Alberto Coffa
J. Alberto Coffa*
Affiliation:
Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University
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Extract

Until recently, the debate concerning whether chance, randomness and disorder are ever instantiated in Nature has been considerably one-sided. Since Aristotle, the mainstream of philosophical thought seems to have been nearly unanimous in agreeing that these characters exist only ‘in the mind’. The shared conviction that every event has a cause or a determining condition led most philosophers who addressed themselves to the topic to the conclusion that there is no randomness in things.

The disquieting suggestion of twentieth century physics that the appeal to probabilities in our attempt to describe the world was not merely a convenient device, dispensable in principle, but maybe the best that can be done, brought the classical problem of chance back to the attention of philosophers of science. Those committed to a realistic interpretation of science felt it was incumbent upon them to provide a realistic interpretation of chance.

Type
Part III Symposium: Fundamental Problems in the Concept of Randomness
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1972 , 1972 , pp. 103 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company

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