Charles Darwin’s now immortal voyage on the HMS Beagle was preceded by an incredulous chain of events that could hardly be termed propitious. The original captain of the ship, Captain Pringle Stokes was beset with depression in 1828, whilst the ship itself was in anchor. Stokes locked himself in a cabin, before fatally shooting himself. Stokes’ replacement Robert FitzRoy, a staunch advocate of human physiognomy, almost rejected Charles Darwin from being a passenger on account of the shape of the latter’s nose. FitzRoy felt that the structure of Darwin’s nose represented a lack of character. Darwin himself was a late and fortunate addition to the Beagle’s crew, a recommendation, courtesy, the original incumbent, a professor, whose wife took exception to her husband making a voyage aboard the ship.
Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London, and host of the award-winning podcast, Power Corrupts, in his arresting book, Fluke, rivetingly demonstrates the influential nature of chance and chaos that affects outcomes ranging from the mundane to the material. Disparate and purely random events possess extraordinary powers that manipulate the direction of events and impact trajectories. Even seemingly innocuous actions undertaken without any deliberate intent produce consequences significantly disproportionate to its causes.
A telling, albeit bleak example of chance and chaos reigning supreme is “Kokura’s luck.” At the fag end of World War II when the Allies were at the cusp of victory with only an obstinate Japan standing between closure and a fatiguing extension of bloody skirmishes, a fateful decision was made to drop the atomic bomb on the land of the rising sun. The secondary target after Hiroshima (itself an unfortunate candidate as would be revealed shortly) ` was not Nagasaki, but the city of Kokura. However, the hulking B-29 bomber, invested with the macabre responsibility of dropping the bombs approached Kokura, the weather played truant. A thick blanket of cloud cover obscured the pilot’s vision, and the plane was forced to make a detour and head towards Nagasaki, a last-minute alternative.
The primary target of the atomic bomb was supposed to be the strategic city of Kyoto. Henry Stimson, the then American Secretary of War, had paid a fleeting visit to Kyoto along with his wife, a full nineteen years ago. The lingering memory of gingko trees, maples transforming into alluring crimson and storied institutes of learning held Stimson in a grip of wistful nostalgia. A six-day vacation altered the fate of two cities. Stimson was able to successfully persuade President Truman to drop Kyoto from the list and replace it with Hiroshima. Truman bowing to the relentless pressure from Stimson, finally relented. Kyoto’s elixir became Hiroshima’s hemlock.
Professor Klaas’s book is replete with astounding real-life examples illustrating the power of chaos and chance. Control and prediction, two attributes upon which we tend to place an unduly high degree of value represent more of a consolation than confirmation, especially when viewed and weighted against the dice of evolution. If the wretched giant rock from space flung by a fickle Oort Cloud a full sixty-six million years ago, obliterating the dinosaurs, had either strayed from its path or delayed its ominous contact with earth, we would be having Tyrannosaurus Rexes and Pterodactyls roaming the only habitable Planet instead of engrossed readers regaling over Professor Klaas’s book!
Fluke, fodder for thought, and a reflection for deed.