Law and Chance (en Inglés) - Fábio Ulhoa Coelho

This book offers an original and interdisciplinary critique of determinism in science, evolution, religion, and legal thought, arguing that chance, contingency, and facticity cannot be reduced to causal necessity, probability, or unknown scientific laws. Moving across philosophy of law, legal theory, philosophy of science, evolutionary theory, eugenics, religion, normativism, and rhetoric, this book examines how modern knowledge systems have repeatedly attempted to deny or control chance through scientific laws, religious belief, evolutionary narratives, and legal norms. It challenges the ambition to transform the humanities into predictive sciences and questions reductionist accounts of human behavior, social order, and legal interpretation. At its core, this book rethinks law not as a closed system of norms governed by a single correct interpretation, but as a rhetorical and social system for treating endogenous conflicts within legal communities. By analyzing determinism, causality, the limits of science, the risks of pre-eugenic reasoning, human exceptionalism, decolonial continuity, customary law, legal norms, precedents, and judicial decision-making, this book develops a distinctive contribution to philosophy of law and legal epistemology. It will be of particular value to scholars and students in jurisprudence, legal theory, philosophy of law, law and humanities, philosophy of science, and interdisciplinary legal studies seeking a rigorous account of how chance and rhetoric shape law, society, and human affairs.