Aristotle’s Concept of Chance as an Investigative Tool in Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord

The article focuses on Gersonides’ use of Aristotle’s concept of chance (Physics II.4–6) as an investigative tool in his inquiries in the Wars of the Lord.

Four examples are studied: Divine providence (Wars IV), the agent that generates animate substances (Wars V.3), the agent of miracles (Wars VI. 2.10), and the creation of the world (Wars VI.1).

Gersonides’ inquiries involve various applications of the passages on chance in Physics II. In the discussions of providence and of the agent that generates animate substances, Gersonides invokes the criterion of rarity. By negating the possibility that they are generated by chance he shows that the phenomena or events in question are produced by a purposeful efficient cause. In his expositions of the first criterion for distinguishing between the generated and ungenerated and of the creation of the heavens he employs the criterion of rarity to rebut objections to his thesis. In the discussion of the agent of miracles, he applies the distinction between determinate and indeterminate causes: a miracle has a determinate cause and thus cannot be a matter of chance. In his discussion of the generation of the heavenly bodies, Gersonides draws on Aristotle’s refutation (Physics II.4) of Democritus’s assertion that the heavens were generated “spontaneously,” whereas animals and plants do not come into existence by chance. He demonstrates, on the basis of their functionality, that the heavens do have an efficient cause.