|
|
Article: Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life.
- Article from:
- ETC.: A Review of General Semantics
- Article date:
- December 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Institute of General Semantics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Nicholas Rescher, a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, former editor of American Philosophical Quarterly, and past president of the American Philosophical Association, knows something about philosophy. In this book he applies his knowledge to an analysis of that elusive abstraction we call "luck."
Rescher looks at luck from various perspectives, including the difference between luck, fortune, and fate; how language shapes the way we think about luck; the history behind the concept of luck in the Western tradition; and the impossibility of shaping or directing luck. He offers interesting examples, from antiquity to the present, to illustrate ...