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All “cultures” are different but none is radically foreign or incomprehensible to others.

Marc Augé (1935-2023)

Voting rationally

I wonder whether there is a day without an election somewhere in the world. Recently, there were parliamentary elections in Japan, Bulgaria, Georgia and Botswana, while this week the Americans will choose a new president. In 2024 more than hundred countries will have elections, and approximately half of the world population will be involved. This only concerns elections of national importance. If we add regional and local elections, I guess that on average there’ll be at least one election a day this year, if not many more.
Elections are supposed to measure the opinions of the people and to designate who should represent them in the political institutions. However, as everybody knows, not all elections are free and fair. They are often manipulated. In some countries, those in power will do everything, legally or illegally, to stay in power, for example by influencing the voting behaviour and the choices of the voters before they cast their votes, so that they’ll vote “in the right way”; or, if necessary, such rulers will manipulate the election results. Didn’t Stalin say that it is not important how people vote; but who counts the votes?
Even if elections are free and fair, what then determines how the voters will vote and whether they’ll vote, anyway? Voting should be a rational choice: Carefully, weighing the pros and cons of all candidates for a function (president, parliamentarian, etc.) or of a certain question in a referendum, before making a choice. However, it seldom happens that way. Take, for example, this case, discussed by Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 55): “A study of voting patterns in precincts of Arizona in 2000 showed that the support for propositions to increase the fundings of schools was significantly greater when the polling station was in a school than when it was in a nearby location.” So, where you cast your vote matters, which seems not very rational. In dictatorships, one way of manipulating election results is hanging images of the “Dear Leader” everywhere (and not those of opposing candidates, of course). It shows that “Big Brother is Watching you”, and in this way it pushes your vote in the desired direction (so that the dictator needs not to apply Stalin’s rule, which might be risky).
However, what is a rational voter? In his “The paradox of voting” Aaron Steelman says it this way: “According to the rational-choice perspective, a potential voter should make the following calculation. Multiply the benefits (B) he would receive if his preferred candidate were to win the election by the probability (P) that he would cast the deciding vote. If that figure exceeds the costs (C) he incurs — the time it takes to register to vote and go to the polling place, as well as the effort required to become well enough acquainted with the candidates’ positions to cast an informed vote — then voting is rational. The voter gets more out of the act than he puts in.” Leaving aside that it is almost impossible to calculate (B), (P) and (C) in a reliable way, casting your vote based on such a calculation may be rational, but is it reasonable to expect that voters determine their voting behaviour this way? The paradox of voting tells us that for a rational voter the result of the calculation is always negative, so he or she should not vote. Nevertheless, many people who are rational vote. Why? In the first place, so Steelman, even if it is not rational to vote according to the rational-choice model, “that doesn’t mean that it is without merit. [It predicts] that people will vote in higher numbers when the stakes are high and/or the election is close. … Turnout increases when voters’ B and P values increase.” However, even then the contribution of each voter to the election result is so small, that a single vote does not affect the result. Nevertheless, people vote, so apparently there is more at stake than making a rational choice in the sense of the rational-choice theory.
In fact, people vote for all kinds of other reasons; reasons not based on the rational-choice theory but certainly not irrational or unreasonable. Some feel obliged to vote. Voting belongs to good citizenship. Moreover, which is partly the same, the rational-choice theory supposes that people are individualistic and egoistic, but both suppositions are not true. Humans are social beings and they are also altruistic (at least partly). Belonging to a group belongs to being human. Therefore, so the Wikipedia, “voters … perceive a benefit if others are benefited. Since an election affects many others, it could still be rational to cast a vote with only a small chance of affecting the outcome.” Third, people want to belong to a group and want to show this. Voting is a way to express this belongingness. By your voting choice you show that you are a person of such and such kind. Taking part in the election meetings of a certain party has the same effect. It shows that you are one of “them” and that you have similar views.
How then to vote? Weighing the pros and cons of all candidates or parties or of the issue at stake would be best and most rational, but most people simply lack the time for it. Instead, many people look what candidates and parties did in the past, often only in outline for also now it can take yet too much time to study the political behaviour in detail. In this way, you determine your choice, and often people stay voting for a certain candidate or party for years, unless they have reasons to change.
Voting should be rational and individualistic, so the idea is, in the sense that your choice should be your choice. However, in practice, choices are often based on habit and social adaption. This seems paradoxical, but often it is the most rational you can do in view of your realistic possibilities.

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Sometimes I think and sometimes I am.

Paul Valéry (1871-1945)

Philip Zimbardo (1933-1924)

Philip Zimbardo talking with a prisoner during the Stanford Prison Experiment.
 Source: prisonexp.org/gallery 

Two weeks ago, on 14 October, Philip George Zimbardo died, 91 years old. If you are an avid reader of my blogs and when you are reading them already since many years (and I hope that you do), you’ll certainly know his name, for I have dedicated several blogs to him and his theories. Zimbardo was an American psychologist and he has become famous by his “Stanford Prison Experiment”. For this experiment, he had selected 24 test subjects  with the same background characteristics. Zimbardo assigned them at random to two groups: the prisoners and the prison warders. Although there was no initial fundamental difference between the test subjects in both groups, after one-two days both the prisoners and the prison warders acted very differently in a way that went beyond their particular roles. Already after such a short time the warders began to torture the prisoners, psychologically as well as physically (within limits, for outright physical violence was not allowed). Therefore Zimbardo terminated the experiment after six days, although it had been planned to last two weeks. Since the differences between the test subjects were negligible and since all of them were psychologically healthy, Zimbardo concluded after a thorough analysis that it is not their psychological dispositions that make people behave in an evil way but that it is the situation that brings them that far. Only very few people can resist the pressure of the situation that pushes them into a certain direction, and also only very few display evil behaviour because of a disposition.
Zimbardo was heavily criticized for this conclusion. One point of criticism was that he himself acted also in the experiment (he was the prison director). Moreover, so it was said, had the instructions that the students had received for the roles they had to play as prison warders or as prisoners been different, their behaviour would also have been different and more friendly towards each other. But I think that such criticisms just affirm Zimbardo’s conclusion that “situations can have a more powerful influence over our behaviour than most people appreciate, and few people recognize [that].” For had the instructions for the test persons been different, also their situation would have been different, and then probably the prison warders would have behaved in a less cruel way just because they were in a different situation. (By the way, there were also good prison warders among the test persons; not everybody was “evil”.)
For illustrating the practical meaning of his experiment and for substantiating the truth of the results Zimbardo referred to the similarities between his experiment and the prisoner abuse by American soldiers in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004. He didn’t accept the claim put forward by General Myers (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) that the events were due to a few rogue soldiers and that they were not typical of the American soldier. Instead, as I want to summarize Zimbardo’s words, the soldiers were placed in an impossible situation. The cruel behaviour of the soldiers was, at least for a part, a consequence of the situation in which they had to act. Basically, the soldiers were okay, and the responsibility lay with the military staff and with the American president in the first place. Zimbardo called the effect that good people can turn into evil people in the “right” – so not so right – situation the “Lucifer Effect”. (Lucifer was an angel who fell into disgrace of God and assumed the role of Satan)
Other experiments support Zimbardo’s conclusions. Take for example the famous experiment by Stanley Milgram who investigated how willing people were to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their ethical views. It appeared that many test persons were willing to do so and even were prepared to hurt people physically when instructed to do so. Also in this case, it is possible to interpret the behaviour of the “evil” test persons as guided by the situation they were in. Anyway, though I agree with Zimbardo and Milgram, the question remains why some people refuse to become evil. Apparently, not all behaviour depends on the situation and not for all people the way they act is dependent on the situation they are in. Humans are not situational dopes and apparently there is still room for a moral compass, albeit so that in modern society its role has increasingly given way to situational behaviour, if David Riesman is right with his idea of the other-directness of modern man (while before the present age people were mainly inner-directed, i.e. guided by their moral compasses).
However, if it is so that the situation people are in can make them evil, as Zimbardo states, then it must also be possible that situations can make them behave well. The right situation can stimulate people to behave in the right way, even when by nature they are not apt to do so; a conclusion also drawn by Zimbardo himself, though. Situations can make people devils, but they can make them also heroes or saints. People are not inherently, genetically, bad or good. Most people can do well and can do bad, and what they’ll do depends on the situations they are in and on the pressure exerted there on them. However, as just said, it is not only the circumstances that make who you are and what you do, and Zimbardo doesn’t say that. Also your personality, your moral compass, your views, etc. play a part in what you do. Nevertheless, circumstances have an important influence on what you do. They can make you both a devil and a hero, or something in between.

Sources: Old blogs; Wikipedia, especially here (about Zimbardo), here (about the Stanford prison experiment), here (about Abu Ghraib), and here (about Stanley Milgram).

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Everyday man tends to respect power more than knowledge; when knowledge opposes power, it loses all prestige in this opposition that was once prestigious.

Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991)

Eternal glory

Heraclitus wrote:
αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἒν ἀντὶ ἀπάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν· οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὄκωσπερ κτήνεα (Fragments B29).
Again, like in my last blog, I give different translations of this Greek text:

- For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted like beasts. (Source)
- The best of men choose one thing in preference to all else, immortal glory in preference to mortal good; whereas the masses simply glut themselves like cattle. (Source)
- The best of men refrain from everything for one thing, so that they continuously get respect from mortals, but most people glut like cattle in the yard. (This is the re-translation into English of the text in my Dutch edition of the Fragments, ed. by Ben Schomakers (Source))

Again we see here, like in my last blog, some striking differences in the translations. However, I think that the essence of Heraclitus’ text is this:
- The best of men look for eternal glory from the mortals, while most people glut themselves like cattle.

How should we interpret this? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Heraclitus “recommends” here “the conventional Greek goal of seeking fame: ‘The best choose one thing above all, the everlasting fame of mortals; the many gorge themselves like cattle’ ” This should be in line with other texts by Heraclitus like “Gods and men honour those who are slain by Ares.” and “Greater deaths win greater portions.” (B24 and B25) On the other hand, Heraclitus speaks about glory given by the mortals (κλέος θνητῶν), and that he speaks of mortals, and not, for instance, of men, or that he doesn’t simply say “eternal glory” without any specification, may have a reason. According to Schomakers (Source, p. 70) the word “mortals” puts the text into another perspective: Glory given by mortals is transitory. It doesn’t last forever and will fade away. Actually, there is not much difference between the “external” satisfaction of glory given by mortals and the “external” satisfaction given by stuffing your stomach. (the word “eternal” is used by Schomakers) Implicitly, the text may suggest that it is better to follow your internal morality, your internal values and norms, than to keep yourself busy with this external satisfaction. Don’t be fascinated by the superficial.

This makes me think of what Montaigne tells us in his essay “Not to communicate one’s glory” (Essays, Book I-41; discussed by me in a blog two years ago): “Of all the follies of the world, that which is most universally received is the solicitude of reputation and glory”. Although I think that there is much truth in Montaigne’s view that glory is a folly, nevertheless, I think that to strive for some glory or fame can be practical. For a small amount of glory or fame, can help to open doors. Often people cannot reach their goals because nobody knows them and because just for this reason they are not taken seriously. Once people know you, or rather have heard of you, they tend to listen better to you and are more disposed to help (and maybe they even think that they can profit by helping you). And this can make realizing your personal values and norms easier.

A heap of waste

Heraclitus wrote:
σάρμα εἰκῇ κεχυμένον ὁ κάλλιστος, φησὶν Ἡράκλειτος, [ὁ] κόσμος.
The website “The fragments of Heraclitus”, where I copied this quotation, translates this text this way (see here):

“The most beautiful universe is (a) pouring out (of) sweepings at random.”

In a note it says that “The text for this fragment is very doubtful and should be handled extremely carefully”, and it explains why. Therefore, “with the text being such a problem to start with, any significant information pulled from this fragment will have to be conjecture.”

Nevertheless, I want to give it an interpretation. For this, I’ll use my Dutch edition of Heraclitus’ words (see Sources below). Here, the text quoted has been translated by Ben Schomakers in a somewhat different way (in which, just like in the translation above “φησὶν Ἡράκλειτος”, i.e. “Heraclitos says” has been ignored). Re-translated into English it reads:

“a heap of waste arbitrarily swept together
the most beautiful order”

Although translations by different translators are often different, in this case the difference is remarkable. However, I am not in the position to judge which translation or interpretation of Heraclitus’ words is best. My Greek has become rusty through the years and I am not a Heraclitus specialist. Anyway, Schomakers’ translation is in keeping with other translations I found elsewhere on the internet (for instance here (see #40), here (see #124) and a few more), so I’ll follow Schomakers’ version.
In a first interpretation, I think, one can take the text as it is: simple, banal things or events of everyday life are beautiful. Or: simple, banal things or events of everyday life are also beautiful. It is one reason (though not the main reason) why I take pictures of ordinary objects found on the street. See for example here on my photo website: Left or lost.
But let me look at the interpretation of Ben Schomakers’ of Heraclitus’ words. Following Schomakers, one interpretation of this text could say that the Greek philosopher wants to tell us that the cosmos has no order or structure. The cosmos is not more than a hotchpotch of things swept together. According to Schomakers, this interpretation of what Heraclitus says is unlikely. It is not in line with the other remaining fragments of what Heraclitus has said and with the little we know about him. More likely is, so Schomakers, that Heraclitus wants to ridicule this view. He wants to say: Isn’t is ridiculous that the cosmos is like a heap of things if not of waste simply swept together? There must be at least some order in the world. It is impossible that the cosmic order is like a heap of stuff swept together. Rather, we should see the cosmos as an orderly unity steered by a god.
Maybe this is so, but I think that an interpretation of the text depends also on which level the cosmos is considered. When one considers the physical cosmos, the idea that there is order in the world is inescapable. However, when one considers the human cosmos or even more the political cosmos, isn’t then the first idea that pops up in the mind that it is a mess? That there is no order? How else should we judge the present situation in the world?

Sources
- The fragments of Heraclitus, https://heraclitusfragments.com/files/e.html  
- Heraclitus, Alle woorden. Amsterdam: Boom, 2024.

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You're insane until you're a genius.

Johan Cruijff (1947-2016)

Fine-tuning the moral compass

I think that everybody has it (or so I hope): An internalized set of values and objectives that helps to navigate through life and to act ethically and to take moral decisions. In short: I think that everybody has a moral compass. However, how you fill it in, so what your individual moral compass is, is a personal affair. Fundamentally, each person has personal values and objectives, and they may be different from those of other persons, though broadly for groups of persons they more or less agree. But it is one thing to have a moral compass, it is another thing to act on the basis of it. For personal affairs and decisions that have only consequences for yourself, it’s an individual matter and you owe responsibility only to yourself. But much individual behaviour has social consequences. Then it is important that people act in the right way and sometimes that they act anyway, even if they have no personal interest in doing so. How can we make that people do so; so how can we influence their moral compasses?
In the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, I read an interesting article about investigations at the Utrecht University about this problem. Do people help others they don’t know, if it is not in their own interest? How to make car drivers adhere to the speed limit, which is useful for the group of drivers as a whole, but not for the individual drivers? How to make streets safer? In such situations, the moral compasses of individuals are relevant, and it is important to know how to change them in the right way, if necessary, or at least how to influence them so that people behave in the socially appropriate way.
Rewarding and punishing are important instruments for guiding behaviour, although they are not the only ones. What the investigators at the Utrecht University want to find out is how we can reward people best. Of course, during the years much research has been done already in this field, and what the investigators want to do is to fine-tune the rewarding approach for the problem at hand, namely public behaviour. Because the investigations just started, results are not yet known, but on the basis of a literature study something can already be said about it. In order to stimulate social behaviour, you can appeal to someone’s ideals or to his or her obligations. What is most effective? Although public campaigns often set out the obligations people have towards each other, investigations have shown that it is better to point to their ideals. For instance, in a recent campaign in the city of Utrecht street harassment is dismissed as loser’s behaviour, but maybe it should be better to stress that a harassment free city will make it safer for everybody and isn’t this what everybody wants? Or a charity campaign should not stress that you have an obligation to contribute to a better society, but it should point to the ideal that everybody wants a society free of misery. In my words, in order to stimulate socially desirable behaviour one should not point to the bad side of human beings or say that some things just have to be done, but one must point to the good side; to what people wish that will happen and to what they strive for. Be positive, not negative, but hasn’t this always been so?

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I find first, then I seek.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

The household revolution

Every household has it: a vacuum cleaner. For how could you clean your house without it? Especially your carpets? Impossible, you think. Nevertheless, until about 125 years ago, vacuum cleaners didn’t exist. Till then, you had to swipe your rooms and to beat out the rugs outside. You had a special instrument for that: the carpet-beater. It was a lot of work. At the end of the 19th century, the first vacuum cleaners were launched, but they were yet impractical. This changed with the invention of the portable electric vacuum cleaner in 1907 by James Murray Sprangler. One year later, the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company brought an i
mproved version on the market. Although it weighed 20kg, it was the start of the successful introduction of vacuum cleaners in every household.
The invention of the vacuum cleaner illustrates an important revolution that took place a hundred years ago: the Household Revolution. Although for centuries humanity had made progress in many respects, the organization of domestic work had hardly changed. The invention of agriculture had changed how people feed themselves, how they work, how they live together (the rise of cities), and so on. The use of metals for producing tools and weapons also had such an impact, as had many other discoveries and inventions as well. Although these innovations influenced also the daily life at home, one thing remained the same: all household work still had to be done by hand. From the time of the Roman Empire and far before till the mid-19th century all household work was done basically in the same way: peeling and cutting the vegetables; washing the cloths one by one; preserving the food; everything that you did at home had to be done by hand, for machines to make the work easier hardly existed. Only the tricks to do so were different from culture to culture. When you were rich, you could hire servants for doing the work or you could outsource the work to specialized firms, but the work itself was done in the same way: by hand. “What a slave work!”, as Henri Lefebvre remarks. There were no fridges, no washing machines, no vacuum cleaners; nothing. But this all changed around 1900. And not only the household work as such changed, because it became easier, the household appliances saved also much time that people could use for doing something else.
The revolution didn’t come suddenly. The introduction of new household appliances took decades and may not have been completed until around 1970, but in the end it changed the household work everywhere, even in that way that also rich people began to do it themselves. Moreover, the technological change was not limited to appliances that made the household work easier. At the same, time there were also many changes in the field of communication and amusement, like the introduction of the telephone, radio and television and cars. These products were not only introduced in the households, but they became also part of the world around. The result was that life at home didn’t only become easier, but life at home as such changed. People greatly changed their live patterns at home; housewives got more free time, which stimulated their emancipation; also the way people had contact with family and friends changed. While once long winter evenings at home were filled with board games, reading, talking, making music, etc., now people listened to the radio (and later watched TV). It had also become easier to go out and people had more time to go out. The amusement outdoors had become different, for instance by the arrival of the cinema and the rise of sport clubs and other clubs. Life got a new dimension.
Actually, I should call this household revolution the First Household Revolution. Not long after its end, a Second Household Revolution took place: The invention of the computer – especially the personal computer – and the internet, soon followed by the invention of the smartphone. Although this revolution is still going on, it is already certain that these inventions have revolutionized daily life. They have caused already such changes, that it is almost impossible to think how everyday life could go on without digital appliances. The essence of this revolution is that it revolutionized the way we communicate and the way we get and use information. Should I have to typify both revolutions, then I would say that the first one changed how we act, while the second one how we think. The first one made life easier, the second one fundamentally different. One main consequence of the second revolution is that humans have become more individualistic but also more impressionable.
What has been brought by the Second Household Revolution? Because it is still going on, I will limit myself to a few keywords and to brief indications: individualisation, globalisation; change in the way we communicate (that we are accessible at any time and for everybody, for instance); changes in banking, research, production, automatization, education, health care; entertainment. Should I add more? This revolution changes not only your way of life but also your style of life. Or rather, you don’t only express yourself in a different way, but this revolution makes you different as a person. With this also the household work changes. Soon, everything in your household will work fully via the internet. You only need to program your personal settings and all devices at home will work according to your wishes, unless the internet is down, of course. Oh, don’t forget the password, in case you need a new modem (but who will enter all passwords for you?)

Sources
- Wikipedia. “The vacuum cleaner”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_cleaner
- Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne. Édition intégrale. Montreuil: L’Arche, 2024 ; p. 667.

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It was accepted as a fact of civilization and an acquisition of culture that discussions degenerated when they used the argument “ad hominem”.

Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991)

A priori reasoning

A priori according to Chat GPT

In these blogs, I have often paid attention to fallacies, so false or deceptive argumentations. Fallacies are often not committed intentionally, so as a deliberate way of manipulation. On the contrary, people usually usually believe in the truth of their false reasonings. This leads often to the drama of explaining the truth: It is one thing to unmask an imposter; it is another thing to disappoint someone. Often the latter is not more than that, but in extreme cases it can also happen that disproving a false argument makes that the world of the person who believed in it collapses. Nevertheless, it is important to expose fallacies, for a world based on false truths makes no sense, even if it is the little world of one person.
It is often difficult to convince others of the falsity of their reasonings. Besides that there may be psychological barriers to accept criticism, reasonings are often complicated, even to that extent that the most-expert minds sometimes make mistakes. Initially, persons not experienced in logical reasoning can also have problems to understand them. Reasoning has to be learned. And then there may be practical reasons why false reasonings cannot be uncovered. In political discussions, for example, the time each speaker gets is often limited, and how to convince each person of the public of the debate? In practice, personal appearance, debating tricks, etc. are more important for a speaker to convince others than what the speaker is saying, even in case what the speaker says is false.
One of the most difficult false reasonings is, I think, the a priori argument; not because it is so difficult to unmask but because of the emotional consequences that this unmasking may have for the person concerned, often leading to a psychological blockade to accept the falseness of his or her argument. The a priori argument – rationalization, dogmatism or proof texting, which are all varieties of this type of reasoning – is (see link above) “a corrupt argument from logos, starting with a given, pre-set belief, dogma, doctrine, scripture verse, ‘fact’ or conclusion and then searching for any reasonable or reasonable-sounding argument to rationalize, defend or justify it.” It is a kind of reasoning much used by ideologists and fundamentalists, but, in fact, saying so would give a false picture of this fallacy, as if only some unflexible minds would use this kind of false reasoning. Actually, any argumentation from unproved suppositions belongs to this category. Such a supposition is then believed but not proved, as a kind of Archimedean point. And this is just the weak point of this kind of reasoning: Why should the argument based on the supposition be true if we don’t know that the supposition itself is true? There is nothing against reasoning from suppositions as a kind of thought experiment, but a reasoning doesn’t become true by simply supposing or believing that its suppositions and the argumentation based on it are true, while in fact there is no evidence beyond this supposing or believing. At most, we can say that the reasoning is an option, not that it is true.
The a priori fallacy is related to the fallacy “appeal to ignorance”, discussed in another blog. This is (see here, #15) “the fallacy that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false, or it must be true.” But if we don’t know whether a claim is true or false, how can we know then whether it is true or false? The website just quoted mentions this example of this fallacy: “Scientists are never going to be able to positively prove their crazy theory that humans evolved from other creatures, because we weren't there to see it! So, that proves the Genesis six-day creation account is literally true as written!” No, for what we don’t know (couldn’t see, in this case) cannot prove anything. Note that this quote includes some other fallacies, namely “appeal to ridicule” and “attacking the evidence”, and a few more (see the last link above; the “appeal to ridicule” is discussed in Bad Arguments by Arp et.al.).
There are some more fallacies to which the a priori argument is related. Especially, I want to mention yet “begging the question”: A conclusion is derived from premises that presuppose the conclusion. Often, in a priori reasonings the a priori supposition is considered reasonable or true because of the argument based on it, while the argument seems reasonable because of the suppositions. Fallacies seldom come alone.

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Economic values are the product of opinions

Émile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Chance

Fortune has many sides and can fall in many ways

The subject I am going to discuss in this blog is a bit tricky. It is not so that as such it is difficult (it is, but that’s not the problem), but the concept I want to treat is a bit difficult to translate into English. In Dutch we call it “toeval” and for this blog I have translated it as “chance”, which, to my mind, is the word that best covers the Dutch concept. However, actually both words do not cover exactly the same ideas. The internet translator reverso.net translates “toeval” also as coincidence and accident. So, if this blog is a bit confusing to you, it may have a linguistic background. Doesn’t the Sapir-Whorf thesis say that our language determines how we think? Although the strict interpretation of this thesis is not right, there is a kernel of truth in it.
Anyway, I want to try to understand what it means that things happen unexpectedly to us; that we did not foresee them; and that we couldn’t foresee them in our present situation. They are not predicted and not predictable, at least not at the moment they happen to us. They just happen and we don’t know why. If they are not random, they have at least an air of randomness. Therefore, we have to live with such ev
ents as they happen. They happen by chance or by accident.
Now you may think: “What happens happens and I can only adapt myself to what happens to me unexpectedly. If it is positive for me I have luck and if it is negative I have bad luck.” However, it is not as simple as that. For such an attitude supposes a unitary idea of chance (“toeval”), while in fact there is not one type of chance that happens and that’s it. Chance has many faces, or rather, there are several types of chance. Each type requires other reactions or makes other reactions possible. Following Jeroen Hopster in his recent book about chance (especially chapter1), I want to distinguish six types (and without a doubt you can find a few more).

1) Things happen as they happen because the world is shaped that way. Is your child a boy or a girl? You had no influence on it. It just happened. At least that is the present situation for most of us. Or take the colour of your eyes: Nobody had an influence on it. It was decided “by nature”. That such things happen is a matter of existential chance.
2) Chance as contingency. Things happen as they happen but could easily have gone in a different way. A footballer wants to score a goal, but just then a gull flies by and the ball hits the gull, so that the keeper can catch the ball. If the gull hadn’t been at the same place, because the wind was blowing a little bit harder, the match would have gone differently.
3) In a general way, I spoke already of “by accident”. However, chance as such can be accidental. In a narrow way we can say that something happens by accident or that what happens is incidental and doesn’t belong to the essence of what is happening. The steeplechase runner falls, not because he has touched one of the obstacles, but because there happened to be a stone on the track that he hadn’t seen. That he should jump over the obstacles belongs to the essence of the race, but the stone should not have been there and should have been removed by one of the officials.
4) Things can also happen by coincidence: Coincidental chance. Things happen to go together and are seen as meaningful for that reason, but they were not planned to go together. I take the train to Utrecht and meet by chance a friend in the hall of the Central Railway Station. However, my train was late and had it been in time, we hadn’t met, because we hadn’t appointed to meet.
5) Chance as a matter of statistics, so statistical chance (not to be confused with the next point). Population distributions often have a certain pattern. Statistically, pop concerts are more visited by younger people and concerts of early music more by older people. If you like both kinds of music and you want to meet young people, when you go to a concert this evening, go then to a pop concert. If you want to meet old people, go then to a concert of early music (but avoid there the musicians, since they are often young!),
6) Often we don’t know the determining factors of what happens, but we know that there are regularities in what happens. Then we can only resort to probability theory in order to explain what is happening, if we can. But I think that in the human sciences we can ignore this type of chance, since it is probably only a useful concept in physics and biology.

Chance has many faces. It is covered by many concepts: existence, contingency, accident (in a neutral meaning), coincidence, statistics and probability. In Dutch these faces are summarized by the word toeval. In English, we can call it “chance”, although this is maybe a little artificial. However, the idea is the same: What happens to us in an unforeseen way, unpredicted and unpredictably, without a known reason, or accidentally cannot be seen as the consequence of a general abstract phenomenon. For practical reasons we can say “it just happened” and we go on with what we are doing, but if we want to understand what happened, we must explain what we mean with this “it just happened”. There is no chance as such but there are only chances. But there are also chances in a different way, and not only in the way described above. For each chance is not only an event that just happens but also an opportunity and possibly a lucky coincidence you can profit by. What actually was a contingent coincidence that happened by accident and may have not been statistically very likely may turn out well for your existence, if you seize the chance.

Random quote
The learning of many things does not teach understanding

Heraclitus (about 540-480 BC)

Montaigne in Innsbruck

“a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley..."

When the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was 47 years old, he decided to make a long journey through Europe. Why exactly he made this journey is not known. Was it only for pleasure? A kind of “Grand Tour”? Did he have a secret mission? We don’t know. What we do know is when he made the trip and which places he visited, for Montaigne kept a diary of his journey. It has apparently been written for private purposes only. He didn’t mention it in his Essays and it was found 180 only years after his death.
Montaigne didn’t travel alone. He was accompanied by four other gentlemen, including his youngest brother, plus a number of servants. After having arrived in Rome, Montaigne travelled without the company of the other gentlemen. They left Paris in September 1580, and went via Augsburg and Munich in Germany through Austria to Venice, Florence and Rome in Italy. From Rome Montaigne made also a round trip through central Italy. He returned to France in 1581, when the king had ordered him to do so, because he had appointed him mayor of Bordeaux. Montaigne did so reluctantly and he didn’t hurry to reach Bordeaux. 

Fernand II

One of the places where Montaigne stayed during his travel was Innsbruck, in Tirol in Austria. This summer I spent a holiday near this town, and I decided to take photos of places visited there by Montaigne. After his stay in Seefeld in Austria, which I have described in another blog (see here), Montaigne’s next stop was Innsbruck, where he (and his company; but I’ll leave this mostly implicit) arrived in the evening. Innsbruck was (and still is) the capital of Tirol, and it was also the residence of Fernand II, Archduke of Austria. Montaigne describes Innsbruck as “a very beautiful little town and well built, standing in the bottom of the valley and full of fountains and running water… The houses are almost all built terraced, and we found lodgment at the ‘Rose’.”

The Golden Rose today

There are still many fountains in Innsbruck, and also “the Rose”, usually called “the Golden Rose”, is still there, although it is no longer an inn. Since about 40 years this old inn from the 14th century houses a shop of a well-known glass crystal company. The day after his arrival, Montaigne makes a trip to Hall, a town situated two miles east of Innsbruck and known by its salt industry. Hall has several beautiful churches, so Montaigne, and he tells us that he visited the church of the Jesuits there (just as he had visited the church of the Jesuits in Innsbruck).

Hall, Church of the Jesuites

When I was in Hall, I found the church closed, but an information board on the front wall told me that the present church dates from 1608, so it must have been the chapel of the Jesuits, built in 1573, that Montaigne visited. Also the church of the Jesuits in Innsbruck visited by Montaigne was another one than the present baroque church from the 17th century.
On their way back from Hall to Innsbruck Montaigne and his company decides to pay a visit to Archduke Fernand, who stayed at that moment in his castle in Amras, halfway Hall and Innsbruck. Also in the morning, on their way to Hall, Montaigne c.s. had tried to see the archduke, but the archduke had given the message that he was too busy to receive them. Actually, it was, as a court official told them, because the archduke didn’t like the French. They even didn’t get permission to visit the castle, built in 1563 and

The Ambras Castle

housing a large art collection. So, Montaigne returned a bit irritated to Innsbruck, where he turned his steps to the Hofkirche (Court Church): “We next saw in a church eighteen magnificent bronze statues of the princes and princesses of the house of Austria.” What Montaigne doesn’t tell us is that this church houses the tomb of the Austrian Emperor Maximillian I (1459-1519) (The tomb is a cenotaph and the body of the Emperor has been

Innsbruck, Hofkirche

buried in Vienna). It’s true that the tomb was then still under construction, so Montaigne will not have seen it in all its glory. The bronze statues, which Montaigne does mention, surround the tomb as a guard of honour. Maximilian’s idea was that he wanted to be surrounded by his ancestors and role models. Montaigne writes that he saw eighteen statues there, though in fact there are 28, the last one being cast already in 1550. A mistake?

Cenotaphe of Maximilian I surrounded 
by bronze statues

After having left the church, Montaigne “went to sup with the Cardinal of Austria and the Marquis of Burgant, sons of the archduke”. No, not as a guest but as a spectator, for in those days it was customary to watch the meals of princes, as if it were a spectacle, as my Dutch edition of Montaigne’s travel diary explains.
The next day Montaigne left Innsbruck and travelled via the Brenner pass to Sterzing (Vipiteno) (see here).