Chance in the gaps! 😆

Yea, Democritus himself, as it is reported, averred that he would prefer the discovery of one true cause to being put in possession of the kingdom of Persia. And that was the declaration of a man who had only a vain and groundless conception of the causes of things, inasmuch as he started with an unfounded principle, and an erroneous hypothesis, and did not discern the real root and the common law of necessity in the constitution of natural things, and held as the greatest wisdom the apprehension of things that come about simply in an unintelligent and random way, and set up chance as the mistress and queen of things universal, and even things divine, and endeavoured to demonstrate that all things happen by the determination of the same, although at the same time he kept it outside the sphere of the life of men, and convicted those of senselessness who worshipped it. At any rate, at the very beginning of his Precepts he speaks thus: “Men have made an image of chance, as a cover for their own lack of knowledge. For intellect and chance are in their very nature antagonistic to each other. And men have maintained that this greatest adversary to intelligence is its sovereign. Yea, rather, they completely subvert and do away with the one, while they establish the other in its place. For they do not celebrate intelligence as the fortunate, but they laud chance as the most intelligent.”

Translated into more modern english by copilot below:

Democritus himself, as people say, claimed that he would rather discover one true cause of something than be given the entire kingdom of Persia. Yet this was said by a man whose understanding of causes was empty and mistaken. He began from a false principle and a wrong hypothesis, and he failed to see the real foundation and universal law that governs how nature works. Instead, he treated as “wisdom” the idea that things happen without intelligence—randomly and without purpose. He made chance the ruler and queen of everything, even of divine things, and tried to prove that all events are determined by chance. At the same time, however, he insisted that chance has no role in human life and mocked people who worshipped it.

In fact, at the very beginning of his Precepts, he says:

“People have invented the idea of ‘chance’ to hide their own ignorance. Reason and chance are naturally opposed to each other. Yet people claim that this greatest enemy of intelligence is actually its ruler. They destroy reason and put chance in its place. They do not honor intelligence as something fortunate; instead, they praise chance as if it were the most intelligent thing of all.”