Luck and Chance in Aristotle's Book 2

[SisterM]

Greetings to all.
I am a new member of this forum, one of those strange species called a graduate philosophy student.
I am presently doing research for a paper evaluating Aristotle's argument in Bk 2 chapt 4-6 on luck and chance.
While I don't think the argument is propter quid, it seems pretty strong to me. If you have thought I would be glad to hear as well as to learn of any helpful articles you may be aware of.
SrM

[painintheear]

Though I am not specifically informed on the thoughts of Aristotle on the subject you appear to want other established theories as well as independent opinions.

An established theory: The law of large numbers... should be able to search for it just about anywhere. Basically it states that so many things are happening every second it is imparitive that something odd should happen. (I may have misquoted, but that is essentially it.) One example i was given went along the lines that if you are in a room with 23 people/if there were 23 people in the room then you would have a 50% chance of sharing a birthday with one or more of them/two or more of them would have a 50% chance of sharing the same birthday. Sorry, I forget exactly which one it was... heard this about a month ago.

Now for independent opinion/reason:
Physically there is no 'luck'... everything happens for a reason... physics!!! Grammatically though, the word luck is, in my opinion, way misused. 'He is lucky.' ...is wrong, its... 'He got lucky.' If you agree with my (fifteen year old... so dont put too much weight on it! ) opinion I would remember these phrases and their proper uses in my paper.