Chance and Destiny — Introduction

Contingency and Necessity

Man and the Illusion of Freedom

I shall call free that thing which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature and is determined to act by itself alone; and necessary — or rather constrained — that thing which is determined by another to exist and to act in a fixed and definite way. Spinoza

According to our philosophy, humanity is on the road to its perfection.

We might therefore liken this theory to meliorism (to show off with a term that somewhat surpasses me). For meliorist philosophers, the world can be made better through human effort.

Philosophers Karl Marx, Voltaire, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the founder of positivism Auguste Comte would, I believe — perhaps even gladly — accept belonging to this current of thought.

But this movement does not fully satisfy us. While human effort is indeed necessary to draw humanity out of its original primate nature, we at Universal Mechanics — unlike meliorism — would attribute the intention behind this work to necessity. It is not human freedom that drives humanity toward its perfection, but a rigid destiny, as we like to say at the bistro when discussing the evolution of humanity.

 

The Illusion of the Captain

In other words, man does not do what he wants. He must progressively lead his species toward a determined perfection. Humanity may imagine it is steering its own evolution — but this is only an illusion (a necessary illusion that incorporates responsibility and free will, two fundamental notions of humanity). Man gets the mirage of being master of his destiny, but X holds the controls. Man gets the fantasy of creating his own path, but God holds the reins.

The builder-man must believe himself free in order to act well (just as he must imagine himself immortal to cope with the idea of death) — but this freedom is only a lure.

The Creative Principle

From these reflections naturally flows the idea that the world is governed by a superior principle. And this viewpoint, of course, reinforces our preference for determination over chance.

Our conception is thus much closer to optimistic and finalist philosophies. Optimistic, because like Leibniz we believe that "everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" – knowing that according to our theory, the world is always perfect in the present, while remaining perfectible – and finalist, because we believe there exists a final cause, a design, an ultimate purpose already present at the beginning of the world.

 

The Importance of Illusion

As Master of Nature

The Illusion of Being Master

Forgetting the self, welcoming the soul — the only way for man to be "as if" free. J. M. T.

Let us then admit that there exists a principle orienting our species in a determined direction. We can therefore consider this axis as the destiny of humanity. Inside this locomotive, man's actions may appear free. They appear so only. In reality they are not.

A Dependent Freedom

Experience seems to confirm this impossible freedom. Every act accomplished by a person is the result of prior acts. The fruit of a particular history. It flows from a specific upbringing. It is shaped by more or less powerful influences. It obeys tendencies, desires, original places and characters, within a singular cortex. In other words, no action is free. They all derive from a sum of prior parameters.

Moreover, I can only take one action, even when several choices seem possible. In other words, the action I ultimately take was the only possible choice — since it was the only one actually taken.

The common man thinks he has control over his acts. He believes he is choosing his destiny. He thinks he is moving through a world subject to chance. He imagines himself the possessor of free will, the creator of his discoveries. He believes he acts in full freedom.
In reality, this is an illusion. A still necessary illusion for evolution — but an illusion nonetheless.

Illusion Against Fatalism

In heavily industrialised societies, the feeling of being as if master and possessor of nature – to use Descartes' own words — who took great care to place the qualifier "as if" before his proposition – is very strong.

 

This feeling of omnipotence has energised the constructive drive by marginalising the spiritual, which minimised resignation. It thus accelerated the growth of law, morality, and the principle of responsibility.

Chance

Chance corresponds to the beyond-the-horizon toward which humanity advances. But it is a fictional and invented feeling. The world is as it must be. Actions are determined and the purpose already present at the origin.

We attribute to chance our (momentary) inability to explain certain phenomena. Chance attaches itself to the inexplicable, the unforeseeable, the unfathomable, the unintelligible — and simply marks the limits of knowledge at any given moment.

The World Continues After Us

But human inquiry has not finished unfolding. It ceaselessly expands, and man will progressively illuminate all spaces still "unknown" – for example, regarding molecular phenomena, Mach speaks of regularities concealed by complications...

Year 2001

fatalism