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Full Idea
Some people find there is no such thing as a chance event. ..If someone chanced to come into the city square and met someone he wanted to meet but had not expected, they say the cause was his wanting to go and do business in the square.
Gist of Idea
Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings
Source
Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 195b39)
Book Ref
Aristotle: 'Physics', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 1996], p.42
A Reaction
Aristotle spends the book discussing the problem. There is a clear candidate for an uncaused event here, in the chance meeting of two people. See Idea 13108.
Related Idea
Idea 13108 Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle]
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| 14804 | Is chance just unknown laws? But the laws operate the same, whatever chance occurs [Peirce] |
| 19252 | Objective chance is the property of a distribution [Peirce] |
| 23900 | Chance is compatible with necessity, and the two occur together [Weil] |
| 15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
| 20146 | 'Luck' is the unpredictable and inexplicable intersection of causal chains [Kekes] |
| 19671 | The idea of chance relies on unalterable physical laws [Meillassoux] |