Page 23 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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Type I), and by β the probability to reject wrongly H a (incorrectly accepting H 0,
also called an error of Type II).

This description of the scientific approach to investigating nature, and the way
it deals with the inherent random character of most observations of nature (when

randomness cannot be ignored), lead one to conclude that the scientific discipline
nearly always deals with coincidences. What these imply cannot be gauged in
advance, but requires a formal statistical methodology that will ascertain, by the
calculation of probabilities, which hypothesis is more plausible, given the sample
of coincidences (read, “random observations”), and which is less plausible. It is
the weight of the evidence, as quantitatively measured and estimated by statisti-
cal procedures, that leads one to decide which hypothesis should be accepted as
probably true.
While the above description of the scientific methodology introduces one pos-

sible approach to dealing with coincidences, there are other cases less likely to be
subject to the same routine.
Take as an example an eventuality that most of us have probably experienced
one time or another: you think of a person, and shortly thereafter, you meet that
person, or that person contacts you. One can formulate two hypotheses:

H 0: This is sheer coincidence.
H a: When I think of a certain individual, I concurrently send a message to
this person (via telepathy) to communicate with me.

How does one select a hypothesis as probably true? Surely, if the phenomenon
of telepathy was invariably present, one would accept H a to be true without any
hesitation (the question of what is meant by “invariably” of course has also to be
settled before a scientific claim is made). Most often, this is not the case. Telepathy

has a nature of being extremely elusive; it is not always there. Therefore, the choice
of the hypothesis which is more faithful to the true state of the world is not simple
or self-evident. Alternatively, one can conduct a controlled experiment, where
observations are generated and recorded. In this case, we have at our disposal a
statistical methodology that would allow us to accept H 0 or H a while controlling
for the error probabilities. Indeed, such experiments have been conducted with
regard to telepathy, and they are well documented in various books and published
refereed papers.
But what if the number of available observations is limited to such an extent
that no statistical analysis may be implemented—and, furthermore, one cannot
generate controlled observations within a well-planned designed experiment, and
all you have is a limited number of field observations that you have no control