Causality and chance

pp. 155-160

in: Philipp Frank, Robert S. Cohen, The law of causality and its limits, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

In ordinary life the word "accident" is used mostly for an event that has taken place without having been intended. If we say for example "Today I have accidentally met N.N.", we want thereby to say "I have met him without myself or himself having intended it". However the term is not used if an event takes place that we expressly wanted to avoid. If, for example, a skater falls down while executing a complicated figure, he hardly will say: "I have fallen down accidentally, " though he will use this term if he is made to fall by an unnoticed obstacle. If a shell is fired and misses its target because a sudden gust of wind interfered, we say that an accident caused the miss.