It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere at being in nature. (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).
...Hume is correct when he says that chance has no power because it has no being in nature.
Hume states a truism when he says that “nothing exists without a cause of its existence.” His analysis of causality does not annihilate or disturb the law of causality. He focuses on the limits of empirical perception and on our inability to arrive at demonstrative knowledge of necessary connection. This makes no dent in the formal law of causality, which is analytically true. It is true by definition. It carries no synthetic baggage. The law of causality has no concrete content. It is theoretically possible that there are no real causes and/or no real effects in the universe. Though l believe there are both causes and effects, my belief does not make it so.
What is unassailably true is that if there are real effects there must be real causes, and if there are real causes there must be real effects.
Science and philosophy use the formal law of causality in their spheres of investigation as an extension of the law of non-contradiction. Assumptions are made about effects, and then searches are undertaken for sufficient causes of those effects. Physicians search for “causes” of diseases and causes of medical healing.
When something is assumed to be an effect, it is usually done so by virtue of a perceived change in its state. Change, as Aristotle observed, may he understood as a type of motion. Generation and decay, aging, movement. and the like are all forms of change and/or motion. They are ingredients of what we call contingency.
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In a significant way Hume’s study of causality anticipated Werner Heisenberg’s theory of indeterminacy. The mysterious behavior of quantum particles posits at least a temporary limit to our powers of perceiving the real cause(s) of motion or change. But they do not give us license to adopt an irrational, unscientific view of chance as a causal agent, force, or power.
Chance as a real force is a myth. it has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue the advance in knowledge, chance must he demythoiogized once and for all.
R.C. Sproul, Not A Chance, 201-203
