Oh you chance-y huh?

In the first half of our Thursday discussion, we discussed Darwin's conception of chance.  It was decided that Darwin believes that chance is simply due to our "ignorance of the cause of each particular event".  This coincides with Aristotle's description of chance.  To Aristotle, every action causes a reaction that is due to 4 causes: material, efficient, final and formal (I won't get into descriptions of what they are but you can read about it in his book on Physics).  However, there are cases which will at first seem to not be a result of any of the 4 causes.  In these cases, Aristotle explains the event as being caused by chance.  However, in the end, chance is simply a placeholder for until the actual causes can be determined and that events are all caused by intentional acts.  If this is the case, it seems to agree with the idea of the Grand Unifying Theory, which can explain everything in the world.

However, I don't believe that this Grand Unifying Theory (GUT) exists. Like what was said on Tuesday, because we live in a time relevant world, everything is constantly in motion and thus changes will constantly occur.  A single GUT might be able to describe the existence of things in a "snapshot" but cannot persist as time continues.  Additionally, I would never want to know this GUT if it does happen to exist.  Having this knowledge would be comparable to replaying a mediocre game or rewatching a movie for the 100th time.  I would rather have a life of spontaneity rather than knowing that coincidental things are truly so rather than having some obscure cause.  Also, I would like to know that I learn the concept of chance and the actual word for a reason rather than just an amalgamation of letters that's used as a placeholder for our ignorance.