The limited belief in chance

Abstract

In a rarely quoted paper, published in 1958 in the American Journal of Physics, T. Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa introduced the idea that the concept of chance as employed in physics is subject to what she called a ‘Limited Belief in Chance’. In this paper I elaborate the latter concept and the distinction between absolute chance and relative randomness, where the latter, but not the former, is governed by the theory of probability. I argue that in the twentieth century virtually nobody believes seriously in the possiblity of absolute chance, whereas the concept of chance in the Scientific World Picture (including quantum mechanics) is only ‘chancy’ relative to a limited belief in chance grounded in the Manifest World Picture of an orderly world.