I’ve been watching some of the YouTube videos posted by the TED group, including one presentation by Murray Gell-Man (he of The quark and the jaguar).  Most of the presentations at TED seem short and sweet, not a lot of technical detail but a good – if broad – explanation of an interesting concept enabling people to gain something like a ‘lay of the land’ within intellectual life.

One of the things Gell-Man was saying in his presentation which really struck home, however, was the role of accidents.  “The history of the universe is … co-determined by the basic law and an unimaginably long sequence of accidents (outcomes of chance events)” (Time: 4.59).  He re-emphasises this point at various places during the presentation, that accidents are crucial co-determinants of reality together with any basic law that exists.

For a long time I’ve been fascinated by a short and simple point made by Deleuze.  “It will be said that the essence is by nature the most important thing. This however, is precisely what is at issue: whether the notions of importance and non-importance are not precisely notions which concern events or accidents, and are much more ‘important’ within accidents than the crude opposition between essence and accident itself.” (DR, P189, Athlone edition)

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