Gould suggests in his Wonderful Life that “replaying life’s tape” (Gould 1989 p51), setting time back to a point previous to the present day and letting events play out, would result in outcomes markedly different from actual history. He posits that we would see radical differences between the results obtained from the replay, and the results obtained from actual history, if even an event seen to be unimportant was altered by a small amount. This is Gould’s concept of the contingency of outcomes. Gould’s idea suggests that results are highly dependent on the events preceding their conception, that they are reliant on their initial conditions. He considers the concept important as it represents the ability of the individual to have large effects on the final outcome of history (Gould 2002 p1341). …show more content…
We can understand Gould’s idea of contingency by employing his example of the decimation and diversification of cambrian fauna. A small change in one of the cambrian ecosystems would allow, in Gould’s eyes, a different anatomical design to avoid decimation. This anatomical design would be part of the few remaining designs and thus a high degree of difference between our own current biosphere and this simulated biosphere would be created. Therefore the state of the current biosphere is highly contingent on states in the biosphere of the cambrian era. Gould emphasises the fact that “contingency is a thing unto itself” not a combination of determinism and randomness (Gould 1989 p51) but rather a third path of explanation. Further detail and rigour in the construction and representation of the idea of contingency is missing in Gould’s writings, thus leaving the concept open to possible
In Susan Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It, life for Miranda and her family comes to a screeching halt after a meteor collides with the moon, triggering calamitous natural disasters. After the initial tragedy, humanity is left with unanswered questions, to which no one seems to have answers for. As a result, Miranda must forget about her normal, mundane life and focus on the hardship ahead of her and her family. With her world collapsing around her, she is left with choices and responsibilities that affect her loved ones as much as herself. Through literary devices, Pfeffer emphasizes the emotional struggles and physical battles Miranda must surmount before and after the misfortunate collision.
He points out that although changes do happen in nature, it is not so easy to determine how they changed. He is also not sure if Thoreau’s description of “a maimed and imperfect nature” is the correct way to refer to ecology, since it is by its essence, a fluid system of changes and reactions. Cronon does not deny the impact of
There are many unpredictable and ungovernable accidents, coincidences, and chances that drive the universe and can ultimately affect the events of a person’s life. One of the main concepts surrounding David Guterson’s novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, is the power of free will vs. fate. The last sentence of the novel: “accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart” explains the lack of control that humans have on the forces surrounding them compared to the control they have over their actions or decisions and the impact that it has. Snow Falling on Cedars looks closely at the effect free will and fate has through the murder trial that occurs post World War II in the story where a Japanese American, Kabuo Miyamoto, is charged with the murder of an American, Carl Heine. As the trial takes place, the story interconnects the characters one of who is Ishmael Chambers, a journalist who may be Kabuo’s only hope but struggles with the decision to do what’s right as he was left burned by Kabuo’s wife and his childhood love, Hatsue. The notion of chance and free will can be seen especially in the character of Ishmael who struggles against the effects of the war and Hatsue leaving him. And as a Japanese American during the war, Hatsue herself displays the power of free will in her self-acceptance and in creating a balance in her life. Apart from the portrayal of free will vs. chance in the development of the characters, certain events in the novel such as the case of Carl Heine’s death and the war itself exhibits similar themes. However, unlike Carl’s death, the war shows that there are instances where circumstance may be the result of human actions. In David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, the events tha...
In the short story The Scarlet ibis, the author James Hurst suggests how choices can affect an individual’s life.
In “Luck Swallows Everything” and “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility” Galen Strawson and Susan Wolf’s explain the concept of responsibility in both a compatibilist and determinist view. Strawson argued that change was not possible at all when it comes to responsibility due to an individual’s mental nature, while Wolf argues that change is possible for an individual when it comes to responsibility. This essay will be focusing on the criticism of Wolf’s work.
The disaster theory, Gould claims, is an example of good science. It has testable evidence and has an impact on studies in other fields of science, it develops further and explains why the extinction of dinosaurs occurred simultaneously with other events. This theory suggests that a large comet hit the Earth sixty five million years ago, causing the cloud of dust to rise into the sky and to block sunlight. As a result, world temperatures went down significantly, the ice age bega...
Christmastime is a time of joy, peace and love. It is also a time where people put aside their differences, accept one another for who they are and practice unconditional love. Right? Well, apparently not if you happen to lean towards the left politically. After all, there is nothing that liberals won't attack these days. Nothing that is considered out-of-bounds or wholesome enough to be beyond reproach. Case in point, a recent article by Carol Costello, the host of "Across America With Carol Costello" recently penned a piece where she presents the 1946 movie "It's a Wonderful Life" as sexist. Isn't that taking things a bit too far?
One individual’s action may alter the lives, destinies, and future of millions of other people. In A Sound of Thunder, the killing of a single butterfly alters the course of evolution. Bradbury observes how a careless action by one traveler alters the destiny of others. “With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb” (Bradbury 3). Creating destiny is about being careful in actions. Human beings should learn how to create destiny by sticking to or changing their actions. A person should not reject doing one act of kindness even when it appears to be of no significant importance, neither should one commit a bad act even if it appears to cause an insignificant harm. Bradbury emphasizes on the significance of this argument, “destroy a single man, and you destroy a whole race of people and eventually an entire life history” (Bradbury 3). A single act of good or bad can impact or alter the future in unimaginable ways.
We make choices every day, from waking to sleeping our day is composed of choices and the results of these choices. These choices help to shape us to who we are and want to be. But, these results may not be foreseen and may be adverse or favorable depending on the situation. Topics and events in our history ranging from the literacy of common man to unnecessary gun violence were a result of un-foreseen consequences. Our world’s history has been shaped by these consequences forming the world to where we are today.
Richard Taylor defines determinism as “the theory that all events are rendered unavoidable by their causes” and fatalism, as the idea that all events that happen to us are unavoidable (Taylor, 36). He claims that the two theories essentially agree on the same principles and believes that a determinist should be a fatalist if he is consistent. Although he makes a strong case for fatalism, I am skeptic of his application of truth to future statements and I argue that so long as we are unable to test the truth-value of future statements, it is not rationally justified to hold fatalism as true.
Morris, S. C. (2009). Walcott, the Burgess Shale and rumours of a post-Darwinian world. Department of Earth Sciences University of Cambridge, 19(20). Retrieved from DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.08.046
Strong, C. A. "Fate and Free Will." The Journal of Philosophy Psychology and Scientific Methods.Vol. 15, No. 1 (1918): 5-9. JSTOR. Web. 08 May 2014. .
In Peter F. Ostwald’s biography/autobiography, Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius, Glenn Gould’s life slowly unravels, chapter by chapter. The exposure of the personal details of Glenn’s life, as disclosed by Peter Ostwald, allowed for me to gain insight into several aspects of Glenn’s life. While reading this novel, I was able to identify some of the challenges Glenn faced and how I would prioritize those challenges according to my own experiences. As well, I was able to detect some of the BPN core concepts as pertained to Glenn Gould; Being, Time and Context. In this essay I will identify how Glenn’s ambivalent attachment style is reflected in each of these aspects of his life, and how Glenn uses music as a means to maintain closeness as well as distance with his mother.
In a letter to Benjamin, Max Horkheimer reasonably objected to such an “incomplete” view of history: “Past injustice has occurred and is complete . The slain are really slain.” Benjamin’s responds in The Arcades Project by claiming that history is not a science, but rather a category of mindfulness known as remembrance ([Eingedenken)]: “Such mindfulness can make the incomplete (happiness) into something complete, and the complete (suffering) into something incomplete” (471). While Benjamin is forced to concede that this is indeed “theological” thinking, his view of remembrance is nonetheless rooted not in theological abstractions, but rather in “an experience that forbids us to conceive of history as fundamentally atheological” (471). It is wholly characteristic of Benjamin that there should be an experiential core to even his most far-flung theological and messianic conceptions: the experience of remembering past suffering is enough to caution against conceiving past suffering as completed in every
In order to find the connection between the past and the present and future, continuity needs to be considered. “From this point of view, the principle of continuity of experience means that every experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after” (p. 35). There is the past experience of others that have already established a path, a fact, some piece of knowledge, and then there is the experience of someone now in the present who takes that path, that fact, that piece of knowledge and makes it their own. Continuity is the knowledge of the experience of the past being adjusted through the lens of someone else’s exp...