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Contingency Quotes

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Contingency Quotes

“But do you imagine there’s a certain type of person in the world who conforms to the idea of a ‘bad person'? You’ll never find someone who fits that mold neatly, you know. On the whole, all people are good, or at least they’re normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch. That’s why you have to be careful.”

SelfEvilIndividualFreedomEthicsJapanModernismContingencyMeijiAntebellumFin De SiecleThe Crunch
Book:Kokoro
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“Charles Kahn offers the following summary of how a new metaphysics takes shape in Islamic philosophy: 'My general view of the historical development is that existence in the modern sense becomes a central concept in philosophy only in the period when Greek ontology is radically revised in the light of a metaphysics of creation; that is to say, under the influence of biblical religion. As far as I can see, this development did not take place with Augustine or with the Greek Church Fathers, who remained under the sway of classical ontology. The new metaphysics seems to have taken shape in Islamic philosophy, in the form of a radical distinction between necessary and contingent existence: between the existence of God on the one hand, and that of the created world on the other.' The new metaphysics that takes shape in Islamic philosophy proves fateful for subsequent philosophy in various ways. What will interest us immediately below is how it plays a role in triggering a debate about how to conceive divine creation. What will be of implicit interest later in these replies is how a remarkably unvarnished version of this new metaphysics comes to be detached from its original theological context. The ensuing detheologized modal metaphysics remains in force in some quarters of analytic philosophy, even though it takes its point of departure from a topic (how to understand the act of divine creation) that is no longer of much interest to most analytic philosophers. For the new metaphysics introduces concepts and ways of thinking that, once divested of their theological garb, continually resurface in the history of philosophy up to the present day.”

PhilosophyExistenceHistoryModernCreationLogicTheologyIslamicContingencyNecessary
Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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“Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”

DestinyHistoryFateMankindEuropeHarmonyLuckContingencyUnforeseenPattern
Book:History of Europe: v. 1
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“In line with the total assault of scientific investigation and critical rationality on our most well-cherished and established intuitions, why should we expect the characteristics of reality to be trivial extensions of characteristics specific to the temporal-causal perspective of the subject? [...] Liberation from a model of time restricted to a particular contingent constitution does not rob the subject of its cognitive and practical abilities, but releases it from the shackles of its most entrenched dogmas about the necessity of the contingent features of its experience. In doing so, it sheds light on the prospects of what the subject of experience and the exercise of change in the world is and can be as it cognitively matures. The transition to a state where one is no longer afraid of being lost in time, having come to the realization that time accommodates no one, should be celebrated as the sign of rational maturity, rather than decried as a manifestation of the subject's impotency. It is in continuity with the critical attitude of rational agency to adopt a model of experience that can interrogate the most natural and established 'facts of experience' rather than corroborating them via the so-called fact that these are simply the ways in which we experience the world. As the extension of this interrogation, such a model should also enlarge the field of our experience, and in doing so, should theoretically and practically challenge popular yet puerile ideologies built around either a temporal account of progress or the second law of thermodynamics.”

TimeContingencyDogmas
Book:Intelligence and Spirit
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“Like most visionary utopias, though. IDN (Integrated Data Network) was never to be. Perhaps it was simply too ambitious a project: infrastructures seldom respond to a single vision or a master plan, as Paul Edwards (2010) writes, and conjuring up a platform that would serve the entire marketplace was an almost Quixotic task. Infrastructures emerge not through planning and calculated foresight, but through the meandering paths of history, in the mangle of making, tinkering, and wrestling with the obduracy of organizations, practices, and their installed base. The system eventually introduced for Big Bang reflected this fragility and contingency of infrastructures: it was the creative result of reshaping legacy devices into a system that did the job for the time being. A band-aid. A product of creative, recombinant bricolage.”

FinanceContingencyAutomationTinkeringBricolage
Book:Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets
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“Outward objects cannot take hold of the soul, nor force their passage into her, nor set any of her wheels going. No, the impression comes from herself, and it is her own motions which affect her. As for the contingencies of fortune, they are either great or little, according to the opinion she has of her own strength.”

LittlesSoulForceOpinionObjectsFortuneImpressionWheelsPassagesContingency
Book:The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
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“The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the "experimental" production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.”

HumansDifferentCultureEnvironmentSolutionsConceptsEvidenceProductionsFree WillIdenticalTheologicalHomo SapiensFactualContingency
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.”

I CanSidesMy OwnViewsCareersSeriousCircumstancesMajorsIntellectualCommitmentTraditionBaseballAccidentsBackgroundsFortunateFeaturesMentalityEasternDestinedLifelongCapriciousOdysseyContingencyFamily Tradition
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.”

LawCoursesIndividualForeverRichEventsShapesLimitsMereSpeciesDetailsScalesTensionFascinatingLaws Of NatureExquisiteLarge ScaleContingencyFrills
Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history
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“The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.”

IfsThinkingMenMomentsGreaterWorstSeriousAccidentsMisfortunesRemedyNeverthelessConsolationSufferersContingency
Book:The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)
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“Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.”

WorldHumansEndsPhilosophyUseHandsPurposeExistenceWonderSolutionsPhilosophicalTheologyRemoveAffirmationHuman ExistenceContingency
Book:In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays
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“In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation should not separate the power holders from the rest.”

ShouldStatesPoliticalGivenPrinciplesCuttingParticularTheoryBoundariesNationalismExcludedLegitimacyContingency
Book:Nations and Nationalism
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“It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.”

WorldGivingYearsChildrenHas BeensMadeReasonSeemsMightEarthFormOrderUniverseWaterChancePerfectAliveAtheismComfortableGloryAll ThingsClaimsHistoricalEightBillionsHeightCoveredMight Have BeenFascinationHubrisA Perfect WorldAbodeWhy MeContingencyOctopusHappy To Be Alive
Book:An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas
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“I believe that a person should take an affirmative outlook. There are always problems in life, old and new, uncertainties, and unexpected contingencies. The optimal way to deal with this is not to give up in despair, but to move ahead using the best intelligence and resources that we have to overcome adversity.”

WayGivingShouldBelievePersonsProblemMovingI BelieveDealsAtheismDespairGiving UpResourcesOvercomingAdversityPositive AtheismUncertaintyUnexpectedNot Giving UpOutlookOvercoming AdversityAffirmativeProblems In LifeMoving AheadContingencyOptimalOld And New
Author:Paul Kurtz
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“In all cultures, it is the task of a religion to close the field of contingency ...and to set up havens of the absolute where it is possible to be led from acting to listening, from having to being, from planning to hoping, from judging to forgiving from the finite into the infinite. A society in which such open spaces of eternity do not exist or are only insufficiently developed dies of itself due to lack of air to breathe.”

DiesCultureSpaceActingAirHavensFieldsJudgingListeningTasksEternityAbsolutesInfiniteForgivingDuesBreathePlanningFiniteContingencyOpen Spaces
Author:Eugen Drewermann
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“By admitting they have no contingency plan to assist the millions that may lose subsidies, the administration confirms how the misguided law is unworkable for the American people. I’m committed to working with my Republican colleagues on how Congress can respond to help those hurt by Obamacare’s broken promises.”

PeopleMayHelpingLawLosesHurtMillionsPlansBrokenPromiseRepublicanCongressCommittedAdministrationColleaguesObamacareAdmittingMisguidedBroken PromisesSubsidiesContingencyContingency Plans
Author:Orrin Hatch
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“From our limited vantage point, our lives are marked by an endless series of contingencies. We frequently find ourselves, instead of acting as we planned, reacting to an unexpected turn of events. We make plans but are often forced to change those plans. But there are no contingencies with God. Our unexpected, forced change of plans is a part of His plan. God is never surprised; never caught off guard; never frustrated by unexpected developments. God does as He pleases and that which pleases Him is always for His glory and our good.”

DoeTurnsActingOur LivesPlansEventsDevelopmentPleaseGlorySeriesCaughtEndlessUnexpectedFrustratedReactingContingencyVantage PointUnexpected Turns
Book:Trusting God
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“...for the question is of will, and not, as the insanity of logic has assumed of power. It is not that the Deity cannot modify his laws, but that we insult him in imagining a possible necessity for modification. In their origin these laws were fashioned to embrace all contingencies which could lie in the future. With God all is Now.”

LawLyingLogicEmbraceInsanityInsultDeitiesModificationContingency
Book:The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
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“But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.”

TogetherLeftMy OwnPleasureMistakeGoneAmbitionFoundationStructureDestroyedSubstanceEmptinessDestinedHollowContingencyHollowness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Kripke says that physicalists like me can't explain the 'apparent contingency' of mind-brain identities. He maintains that, if I really believed that pains are C-fibres, then I ought no longer to have any room for the thought that 'they' might come apart. His argument is that, since pains aren't identified via some contingent description, but in terms of how they feel, I have no good way of constructing a possible world, so to speak, where C-fibres are present yet pains absent.”

IfsWorldWayFeelsMindMightPainSpeakTermRoomsBrainIdentityOughtArgumentLike MeDescriptionAbsentGood WayContingency
Author:David Papineau
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