“The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows.” WholeTogetherScienceCausesTakenConditionsNegativeDescriptionBeing RealContingency Book:A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation Source: A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation
“Rupert Grayson manifested a talent for survival: it was said of him that even if - unlikely contingency - he had tried to drown himself in the Thames he would have been washed up alive in the Grill Room of the Savoy.” IfsHas BeensSaidRoomsAliveTalentSurvivalUnlikelyContingencyThames Author:Hugh Massingberd
“What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim "You know exactly what I mean!" depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.” KnowsHumansMeanMomentsCharacterAgeForceRaceExistenceFictionClassDependsReaderOffersGenderIntimacyTranscendenceMessyHuman ExistenceContingency Author:Will Self
“It was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable.” WholeLightScienceGivenProcessNaturalEvolutionChiefsContributionBiologyProbabilityImprobableNatural ScienceContingency Author:Ronald Fisher
“... regard this body as a machine which, having been made by the hand of God, is incomparably better ordered than any machine that can be devised by man, and contains in itself movements more wonderful than those in any machine. ... it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act.” MenWayMadeReasonEnoughBodyHandsPurposeWonderfulImpossibleMovementMachinesRegardPracticalsOrgansHands Of GodContingency Author:Rene Descartes