Felix&Sofie: Tijd, toeval en causaliteit

Time, Coincidence & Causality – The invisible web of our accidental fate

How do time, chance and causality spin the invisible fibres of our existence? In the Gordian fabric of our lives, patterns unfold that sometimes seem random, sometimes predestined. Thus, our life stories alternately offer predictability and surprise. But what do these concepts of time, chance and causality really mean?

Many philosophers have studied these concepts over the centuries. Many a philosopher explained ‘chance’ from a human lack of knowledge and was bent on ultimately reducing everything that was denoted as such to the strict laws of causality. For instance, Spinoza said “What we call ‘chance’ is the refuge of ignorance” and Hegel claimed that “Philosophical reflection has no other purpose than to get rid of the accidental.”

Does that say it all?

Not according to our guests Jeroen Hopster and Victor Gijsbers. Jeroen Hopster invites us to rethink the role of the unexpected in our lives. With stories ranging from the strangest coincidences in nature to the unexpected twists in our personal lives, he opens our eyes to the magnificent complexity of chance. Without reducing particular coincidences to causal banality with deterministic doom, or, on the contrary, extolling them as a profound indication of the existence of ‘synchronicity’, he manages to transcend the common contradictions that dominate our thinking about coincidence and necessity.

Victor Gijsbers challenges us to look beyond the clock and the calendar. With philosophical insight, he reveals how our moments and memories are anchored in the flows of cause and effect. According to Gijsbers, we should not think of causality and time as rigid structures, but as dynamic flows that shape and connect the moments of our existence. He unravels the illusion of the linear unbroken causal sequence, revealing a richly interwoven mosaic of cause and effect.