A striking coincidence is much like a small drama: The Causal Figment

A striking coincidence is much like a small drama: the participants arrive exactly on cue, wear the right makeup, know their lines, and produce results that are significant or trivial, amusing or, sometimes, awe-inspiring. The problem is that no scriptwriter, no director, no stage manager, and no collusion on the part of the actors are involved in the performance; it unfolds, without reason but with perfect order, as though by magic.

Coincidences are baffling because they seem to represent order arising by chance: they resemble the results of an orderly causal process, but they do not have a causal connection that fits our experience. For example, the beetle that flies into the psychiatrist's consulting room just as a patient is recounting a dream in which such an insect enters her room has no discernible connection with the patient. It could not have known how to enter the room on cue. Furthermore, the patient who dreams of this liberating encounter has no way of knowing that it will occur or any means of ensuring that her response will be the one predicted by the dream.

The problem with coincidences is that they violate our notions of cause and effect. But supposing our notions of causality are wrong?

In 1739 the Scottish philosopher David Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature, an analytical rejection of the commonly established ideas of causation. In philosophical terms, his arguments have never been fully rebutted; in scientific terms, much of what he maintained has been justified.

Since Greek philosophers first turned their attention to causality in the fifth-century b.c., it had been almost universally accepted that everything that has a beginning must be caused by something else. Hume rejected this. On the contrary, he maintained, it is not certain that every object which begins to exist must owe its existence to a cause. To believe, said Hume, that every being must be preceded by a cause is no more valid than believing that because every husband must have a wife, every man must therefore be married.

Hume aimed to show that the traditional starting point for theories of causation is incapable of proof; he was not, of course, trying to prove its reverse or any other position. All we can justly say of causality is that what we take to be a cause always precedes what we take to be its effect, and that there is always continuity between the two. Beyond this, he said, nothing could be claimed, and the view that a necessary connection exists between a cause and its effect is nothing more than a habit of mind.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume

The Scottish philosopher David Hume held that the idea of a causal relationship between two events occurring in sequence is nothing more than a habit of mind.

For example, while watching a game of billiards, we confidently expect that when one ball strikes another, the ball that has been struck will move, and we, therefore, persuade ourselves that there is a connection between the motion of the first ball and the motion of the second—between cause and effect. Such an idea, however, is not based on logic or observation, Hume said. All we observe is that contact—contiguity— occurs; the rest is an assumption. Our expectation that a stationary ball will move in a predictable way when struck by another ball may well be correct in most cases, but this is not a certainty. The momentum and inertia of the two balls must be considered—too little momentum or too much inertia, and the effect will not be what we expect. The materials from which the balls are made must also be taken into account, and so must their soundness—is one of the balls apt to shatter rather than move? We must also consider the shape of the balls, the nature of the surface on which they lie, and the stability of the situation in which the event takes place. Among all these variables and many more, we look in vain for an identifiable principle connecting cause and effect; and since we look in vain for it, we are under no compulsion to assert its existence or to accede to such assertions.

Although Hume's arguments may appear to fly in the face of common sense, they have to some extent been vindicated by 20th-century physics. At the subatomic level, ideas of predictability (which should pertain, at least theoretically, if causal connections could be found or even theoretically established) have been replaced by those of statistical probability.

Established ideas of causality have also come under fire at a macroscopic level, particularly among evolutionary biologists. For example, how can we describe the evolution of the reptilian egg in terms of cause and effect? Evolutionary theory holds that changes in organisms occur as the result of random genetic mutations; if one of these changes confers an advantage that allows the organism to produce more offspring, the change is likely to be inherited by the offspring and may eventually become normal for the species. But when we look at the reptilian egg (or the mammalian eye or any number of other features and organs), we see that numerous events must have occurred simultaneously for the development to succeed. The shell, for instance, had to be impermeable and strong enough to protect the embryo. But unless the embryo had at the same time developed some means of liberating itself from the shell, this durable egg would have become a tomb. In addition, the embryo had to develop a means of absorbing nutrition while in the egg. But unless it had also developed some means of storing its own waste products safely, it would soon have created a poisonous environment.

Each of these developments—the durable shell, egg tooth, and so on—had to arise, according to evolutionary theory, as the result of random mutations. But between the mutations that produced the shell and those that produced the egg tooth there could have been no connection (they arose at random), nor between those concerning nutrition and waste disposal. And if there were no such connections, how was the whole process orchestrated? From this point of view, the reptilian egg must be seen as appearing without causal benefit and as representing the culmination of a series of wildly improbable coincidences.

David Hume was well aware that his view of causality would be hard for people to accept when he ascribed the difficulty to the force of mental habits that condition our outlook. If he was right—if we expect causal connections—we have only ourselves to blame (or congratulate) when we find coincidences a tantalizing and titillating affront to the commonsense view we hold of the world.

#coincidences #davidhume #TheScottishphilosopherDavidHume #philosopherDavidHume

The Most Optimistic Expectations: The Perfect Day (Daily Strange's Fearless Friday)

The Most Optimistic Expectations: The Perfect Day (Daily Strange's Fearless Friday)

Everyone, from time to time, experiences one of those perfect days when everything seems to fall into place, a day that exceeds the most optimistic expectations—the kind of day that persuades one that ones guardian angel is working overtime. One of the most extraordinary of these “perfect days” is recorded by Prof. C. E. Sherman, longtime chairman of the Civil Engineering Department of Ohio State University at Columbus, in his book Land of Kingdom Come:

In 1909 while preparing the originals for the Ohio State Highway Atlas, we were hard put to it to get maps of the southwestern counties. . . . The United States Geological Survey had not yet mapped this area, and the only suitable data ... to be had been in the form of old county atlases about 15 inches square and half an inch thick. ...

Much correspondence had secured the data for every county in the state except Pike and Highland. These two could not be had, nor could I discover by all my written inquiry whether any maps of these regions existed. In the absence of any data at all, it would be quite a task to make a complete survey of all the roads in a county. In fact, it was out of the question with the appropriation we had. So I left Columbus, resolved to search the county seats and the homesteads nearby, for a week or two, if necessary, to get the lost data. We also wanted a good map of the Ohio River for adjusting the data we had already gathered.

The following events then happened during the next 12 hours, that Saturday in August: Taking an early morning train for Cincinnati, I found an excellent map of the Ohio at the first place visited, the United States Engineers Office. . . . Proceeding at once to Highland County, I had to wait at Norwood for the Hillsboro car. When I happened to mention the nature of my quest to the ticket agent at Norwood, he said, “There’s an old book like that in the rear room, I think.” We searched the dusty pile together, and fished out the long-sought Highland County Atlas!

Two ways then offered of reaching Pike’s capital that afternoon. I ate lunch and took the B.& O. [railroad] to Chillicothe. In the short wait there, for the N. & W. south, I strolled up the street to call on an old friend, if perchance he were in town. He came toward me as I started, just as if the whole thing had been prearranged. After our chat, as I was mounting the southbound train, a gentleman who had written the day before, hailed me. As his letter was of a nature much more easily answered orally, it was gratifying to give him the immediate information.

I was personally acquainted with but two citizens of Waverly [the county seat of Pike County], one a mechanical, the other a civil engineering student, but hardly expected either of them to be in town. When I stepped off at Waverly, the mechanical engineer stepped off the car in front, and as we walked toward the hotel together he said he would send around the other man if he were home. I had just leisurely finished dinner at seven o’clock when Gehres appeared. Did he know of any Pike County map? “No, but perhaps father does,” he said, “and here comes father now.” Mr. Gehres, senior, said he thought the county auditor had one. The auditor came walking up the street as he spoke. After introductions, and in accord with the happenings of the whole day, he took us across the street to his office in the courthouse, where hung a fine old map of the county. I had written the county surveyor of that same county, but he knew nothing of this map.

I am actually afraid to record here all the incidents of that trip that I have on the memorandum here before me. It would be straining credulity too much. . … You see, every step taken during the day was as much to the purpose as if planned with foreknowledge. I had gone directly to the Ohio River maps . . . Had gone directly to a Highland County Atlas without knowing one existed, by the shortest traveled route; and when from that point two ways might be taken, I had chosen the one that led most directly to the remaining data sought.

Even the smallest incident, during the day, seemed to fit perfectly into a harmonious whole. I suppose much of this was psychological. I had for months been on the quest for all the data for the state, and when this last, the hardest problem began to unravel so easily, it put me in a humor to notice only favoring circumstances, such for instance as the following:

The Norwood agent didn’t want to sell, but would gladly lend his book—this saved us the purchase price; my Chillicothe friend was just leaving town on the car after instead of the car before my arrival; again, the tracing paper I picked up at random that morning, before leaving home, just fitted the large Pike County wall map; then again, the one person that I hoped might be at home to help at Waverly if needed, was on the spot to make the Pike County tracing. Who would expect to get into the courthouse in a strange town on Saturday night? Yet along came just the right persons, at just the right time, to take me to that map, which I didn’t know existed. The train from Chillicothe to Waverly was full of men excursionists; they filled the aisles, yet as I stepped on, a seat was vacant for me, and I had uninterrupted privacy and comfort all the way down to reflect on the events of the day. I retired that night with the sensation of having experienced a perfect day.

SOURCE:

C. E. Sherman, quoted in Alan Vaughan, Incredible Coincidence, pp.92-94

#coincidence #coincidences #expectations