The challenge of chance : a multidisciplinary approach from science and the humanities / Edited by Klass Landsman & Ellen van Wolde.

Introduction / Klaas Landsman, Ellen van Wolde and Noortje ter Berg -- Conceptual and historical reflections on chance (and related concepts) / Christoph H. L©ơthy and Carla Rita Palmerino -- The mathematical foundations of randomness / Sebastiaan A. Terwijn -- Randomness and the madness of crowds / Utz Weitzel and Stephanie Rosenkranz -- Randomness and the games of science / Jelle J. Goeman -- The fine-tuning argument: exploring the improbability of our existence / Klaas Landsman -- Chance in the Hebrew Bible: views in Job and Genesis 1 / Ellen van Wolde -- Happiness and invulnerability from chance: western and eastern perspectives / Johannes M.M.H. Thijssen and David R. Loy -- The experience of coincidence: an integrated psychological and neurocognitive perspective / Michiel van Elk, Karl Friston and Harold Bekkering -- When chance strikes: random mutational events as a cause of birth defects and cancer / Han G. Brunner -- Chance, variation and the nature of causality in ecological communities / Hans de Kroon and Eelke Jongejans -- The size of history: coincidence, counterfactuality and question of scale in history / Olivier Hekster -- Accidental harm under (Roman) civil law / Corjo Jansen -- Taming chaos. Chance and variability in the language sciences / Roeland van Hout and Pieter Muysken.

"This book presents a multidisciplinary perspective on chance, with contributions from distinguished researchers in the areas of biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, genetics, general history, law, linguistics, logic, mathematical physics, statistics, theology and philosophy. The individual chapters are bound together by a general introduction followed by an opening chapter that surveys 2500 years of linguistic, philosophical, and scientific reflections on chance, coincidence, fortune, randomness, luck and related concepts. A main conclusion that can be drawn is that, even after all this time, we still cannot be sure whether chance is a truly fundamental and irreducible phenomenon, in that certain events are simply uncaused and could have been otherwise, or whether it is always simply a reflection of our ignorance. Other challenges that emerge from this book include a better understanding of the contextuality and perspectival character of chance (including its scale-dependence), and the curious fact that, throughout history (including contemporary science), chance has been used both as an explanation and as a hallmark of the absence of explanation. As such, this book challenges the reader to think about chance in a new way and to come to grips with this endlessly fascinating phenomenon." -- Publisher's description.