Endnotes

^1. James Allen, Aristotle on Chance as an Accidental Cause, 66.

^2. The New Oxford Dictionary of English.

^3. James Lennox, Aristotle on Chance, 52, Phys. II iv-vi makes the following claims:
(1) Whatever might have been due to thought or to nature is for the sake of something.
(2) Chance events are “among the things that come to be for the sake of something”.
(3) Chance processes are not for the sake of their results.
(4) Chance processes might have been due to thought or nature.
(1) and (4) imply that: (5) Chance events are for the sake of something.

^4. James Allen points to Aristotle’s passage from Posterior Analytics to claim that Aristotle asserts that “nothing that is by chance comes to be for the sake of something.” James Allen, Aristotle on Chance as an Accidental Cause, 70. The point of conflict with Lennox’s suggestion that “chance events are for the sake of something” is not a topic of discussion in this essay.

^5. Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume One, 337, “[h]ence it is clear that events which belong to the general class of things that may come to pass for the sake of something, when they come to pass not for the sake of what actually results, and have an external cause, may be described by the phrase ‘from spontaneity’. These spontaneous events are said to be from chance if they have the further characteristics of being the objects of choice and happening to agents capable of choice. This is indicated by the phrase ‘in vain’, which is used when one thing which is for the sake of another, does not result in it. For instance, taking a walk is for the sake of evacuation of the bowels; if this does not follow after walking, we say that we have walked in vain and that the walking was vain. (197b19-25)

^6. Lennox, Aristotle on Chance, 55

^7. Lennox, Aristotle on Chance, 55

^8. John Dudley, Aristotle’s Concept of Chance, SUNY Press 2012, 24, “One of Aristotle’s most profound observations is that intelligibility and purpose go together. He states e.g. that if someone said that he had washed himself in vain because the sun did not go into eclipse, he would be ridiculous. Solar eclipses are not what washing is for.”

^9. Lindsay Judson, Chance and ‘Always or For the Most Part’ in Aristotle, 92: “Our aim of understanding the world about us – of making sense of the operations of nature and the strategies of rational agents – requires us to distinguishes pieces of behavior which are reliably connected with those operations and strategies from those which, even if there appear to be, are not.”

^10. The falling apple’s achieved result is “being observed and subsequently inspiring Newton to discover the laws of gravity.” Therefore, the originally expected result is “falling without being observed.”

^11. John Dudley, Aristotle’s Concept of Chance, SUNY Press 2012, 33, “Accidents, therefore, do not have a purpose. Hence Aristotle states that chance, i.e. chance events, does not occur for a purpose. This tenet is stated very clearly in a series of text outside the Physics.” Posterior Analytics II. “Among things that come to be from thought some never arise from chance or from necessity, e.g., a house or a statute, but for the sake of something, while others such as health or safety also arise from luck…but nothing by chance comes to be for the sake of something.” (95a3-6)

^12. Lennox, Aristotle on Chance, 58: “If the result being scrutinized was not the goal of the process leading to it, then it is related to that process only incidentally. However, if the process is one which might have been properly for that goal, if the end result is capable of being the proper goal of that process, and if the process does in fact achieve that end result, there is sense to saying, as Aristotle does, that the process is, by accident, for the sake of that result.”

^13. The terms for Aristotle’s four causes were imposed on Aristotle’s work by later Scholastic philosophers:
(1) The material - of what is it constituted? For example, the bowl is made from bronze. Bronze is the material cause.
(2) The efficient - what moves it? For example, the movement of my fingers causes the keys on the computer to move. This is the efficient cause.
(3) The formal - what is it? For example, I am a human being. This is the formal cause.
(4) The final - what is its purpose (telos)? Health, for example, is the purpose of exercising. This is the final cause.

^14. Phys. II, vi: It is clear that chance is an incidental cause in the sphere of those actions for the sake of something which involve purpose; Dudley, Aristotle’s … 368: Aristotle’s account of chance events is metaphysical and epistemological in nature. Chance is not a substance or a per se cause, since it does not exist in the strong sense. For every event, including chance events, there is a per se cause, which is either nature or intellect.

^15. Dudley, Aristotle’s … 365: The notion of chance accordingly implies the existence of goal-oriented per se causes. In fact all per se causes are goal-oriented since the only per se causes are substances and human decisions, and the latter are always taken for a purpose.