Aristotle on Chance and Spontaniety

The following was written for a class assignment. Footnotes are omitted. 

Chance is a species of the genus spontaneity. Chance is a cause, but unlike other causes it doesn’t have a regular effect. This is because chance does not have an end or telos for the sake of which it strives. While our understanding of causes has a necessary connection to their effects, the connection a cause by chance had with the effect is accidental. So for example, someone may heal an injured person, and he does so because he is a trained doctor. So the doctor is the cause of healing. The doctor may also be a surfer, and it would also be true that the surfer healed the person, but his status as a surfer is not what caused the healing. The surfer status is an accident, that is, it has no necessary connection to the effect. In the same way, chance causes have no necessary connection to their effects. Chance happens for a purpose, but that purpose does not cause it since incidental cause never come prior to the thing, but always posterior to it, and posterior causes do not have ends. Spontaneity on the other hand, while is explained in terms of accidents, is not to be understood against the backdrop of ends like chance does. A stone may fall on someone’s head, but there was no end for the sake of which the stone dropped, and so is considered spontaneous. If, however, the stone was dropped because someone threw it for the sake of dropping it on someones head, this is a chance cause. The cause is not in the rock, for it is not in the nature of rocks to meet people’s heads, so whether it is chance or spontaneous, the cause will be accidental. Unless there was an external agent throwing the rock which makes it a chance cause, it would just be part of the broader term spontaneity.