Dan Falk
Prince Hamlet spent a lot of time pondering the nature of chance and probability in William Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the famous “To be or not to be” speech, he notes that we helplessly face “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” — though a little earlier in the play he declares that “there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” suggesting that everything happens because God wills it to be so.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://sciblogs.co.nz/scibooks/2020/12/15/book-review-the-power-of-chance-in-shaping-life-and-evolution/