Tolstoy and the Illusion of Inevitability | THR Web Features | Web Features (opens in new tab)

"Western thought repeatedly returns to the hope that contingency is an illusion." ... "“Traveler, there is no road. The road is made by walking.” —Antonio Machado Machado’s famous line suggests that the future does not exist in advance, waiting to be discovered, but comes into being through a choice among possible actions. Many possibilities exist at any given moment. The one that becomes actual depends on coincidences and chances as well as choices, all producing events whose significance em...