History and different chains of causation

I'd like to share with you this passage from a William James essay, "Great Men and their Environment."

James has just said that there are different cycles in nature and in the human world that operate in relative independence, even if cheek-by-jowl. It is a point that requires specific illustration. So he writes"

"The mould on the biscuit in the store-room of a man-of-war vegetates in absolute indifference to the nationality of the flag, the direction of the voyage, the weather, and the human dramas that may go on on board; and a mycologist may study it in complete abstraction from all these larger details. Only by so studying it, in fact, is there any chance of the mental concentration by which alone he may hope to learn something of its natre. On the other hand, the captain who in maneuvering his vessel through a naval fight should think it necessary to bring the mouldy biscuit into his calculations would very likely lose the battle by reason of the excessive 'thoroughness' of his mind."

I love that analogy. It helps me understand the appearance of randomness in history, and to abstract from the issue of whether there really is 'randomness' in any deep metaphysical sense. Once in awhile, after all, the mouldy biscuit does somehow intervene in the sea-fight. A gunner, having grabbed the biscuit and bitten into it without thinking, may become ill and miss a target. When this happens, it introduces a note of randomness into the action of the battle and the "human dramas" in general.

Yesterday I wrote of the Mossad operation that captured Eichmann and brought him to Israel for trial. The team was deligtyed to realize that their operation was to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the independence of Argentina, a fact that made their planning of a cover story for getting Eichmann out of the country easier.

Obviously, there is nothing indeterminate in any metaphysical sense about the calender. The 150th anniversary of an event always happens one year after the 149th anniversary. But in this case it looked like a stroke of luck, because the other elements with which these captains and gunners had been operating -- their leads on this suspicious 'Ricardo Clement,' the accumulation of evidence that he was in fact Eichmann, the tracking of his movements -- all that had taken place in absolute indifference to the issue of when Argentina won it independence from Spain.

The mouldy biscuit sometimes does affect the battle after all.