Why leave a chance to chance?

"Why me? Chance in all its forms" © Belin

By: Caroline Lachowsky

4 min

Does chance really exist?

How do we perceive it?

Would God play dice?

Mystery and crystal balls around the question: why leave a chance to chance?

Publicity

If chance does things right sometimes, then why not give it a chance?

And even devote a world scientific congress to it, in this hazardous year 2021?

Chance will indeed be the subject of the next Time World congress which will take place at the CNAM from July 1 to 3, 2021, where scientists, artists, sociologists and philosophers will exhibit and debate for 3 days on the chance of living things, perceived chance and the chance in art.

While waiting for this beautiful meeting,

 Autour de la question

offers you a few crossed views on chance, randomness and the unpredictable, in the company of the mathematician Jean-Paul Delahaye, with the insights of researchers from all disciplines who have come together. day or another asked about chance.

With:

Jean-Paul Delahaye

, professor emeritus at the University of Lille and researcher at the CRISTAL laboratory (Lille research center in signal and automatic data processing).

He writes for the “Logic and calculation” section of the journal

Pour la science

.

Jean-Paul Delahaye is co-author of

Pourquoi moi?

Chance in all its states

published by Belin editions. 

Chance is a method of exploring cases that we cannot anticipate, and allows us to enrich the way we explore the world.

Chance has had an indisputable role in evolution, for example. 

And with the lights of:

Catherine Maunoury

, French aerobatic champion, president of the Aéroclub de France.

What look on chance from the air?

She shares with us her perspective on this notion that flies with her at each departure.

So chance for us is both a concept that allows us to evolve.

It is a bit thanks to chance that we find things, even in piloting, a foot that slips, we can say to ourselves "ah that works".

To move it away would actually not take off, but we are trying to reduce the part of chance, because for us it is synonymous with risk. 

Jean-François Clervoy,

 astronaut at the European Space Agency.

He took part in three space missions in the 90s. He tells us about his report at random:

You know, an astronaut who looks at the Earth from space, who has an incredible sight, which one cannot represent by a photo or a film.

And there we ask ourselves the question: how this living, geological, climatic, tectonic, cosmic being, with its asteroid impacts, its mountains, its reliefs, its colors, its varieties, its contrasts, how was it created?

Is it the result of chance?

Gérard Lambert

,

doctor of medicine and science journalist: 

Darwinian theory is based on chance, on variations which are delivered to chance and which are the fuel of natural selection.

It's great because it's a scientific theory in which it is chance that drives it, it is chance that is the cause.  

For further :

Find the interview with the mathematician 

Ivar Ekland

, who was the guest of Autour de la question for a program called

Le Hasard-t-il existent really

in September 2016.

Soundtrack of the show: 

Emmanuelle Béart -

Pile ou face (

cover of the song by Corynne Charby for the film

8 femmes

by F. Ozon).

Mavis Staples - 

Take a chance on me

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

  • France