"The accidental causes of science are only accidents relatively to the intelligence of a man"
About this Quote
Wright takes a swing at the cozy myth that science advances by pure luck. Yes, discoveries can look accidental from the outside - the stray observation, the mislabeled sample, the unexpected anomaly. But “accidents” only stay accidental at the level of an untrained gaze. To an “intelligence of a man,” they’re legible: not fate but pattern, not miracle but material for inference. The sentence is built like a quiet trap. He grants the romance of serendipity (“accidental causes”) and then strips it of its mystique by relocating the drama where he thinks it belongs: in the mind that can recognize significance.
The subtext is a defense of disciplined attention. Wright, writing in a 19th-century moment when Darwin’s ideas were unsettling old certainties, is wary of metaphysical explanations sneaking back in through the language of chance. Calling something an “accident” can be a way of quitting early, of treating the world as a slot machine rather than a system. He’s not denying contingency; he’s insisting that contingency is filtered through competence. A lab is full of “accidents” every day. Most evaporate as noise. One becomes signal because someone has the habits - conceptual, technical, imaginative - to see it.
That “relatively” does a lot of work. It refuses absolute claims. Chance exists, but it’s indexed to perspective. Wright’s point lands as a moral about modern knowledge: the frontier isn’t just out there in nature; it’s in the calibration of human judgment that turns surprises into explanations.
The subtext is a defense of disciplined attention. Wright, writing in a 19th-century moment when Darwin’s ideas were unsettling old certainties, is wary of metaphysical explanations sneaking back in through the language of chance. Calling something an “accident” can be a way of quitting early, of treating the world as a slot machine rather than a system. He’s not denying contingency; he’s insisting that contingency is filtered through competence. A lab is full of “accidents” every day. Most evaporate as noise. One becomes signal because someone has the habits - conceptual, technical, imaginative - to see it.
That “relatively” does a lot of work. It refuses absolute claims. Chance exists, but it’s indexed to perspective. Wright’s point lands as a moral about modern knowledge: the frontier isn’t just out there in nature; it’s in the calibration of human judgment that turns surprises into explanations.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|
More Quotes by Chauncey
Add to List
