Question: How would you stop big accidents happening? Isnt it just fate?

Drew Rae answered on 9 Jun 2011:

“Fate” means different things to different people. Even very religious people often believe that their God likes them to do things for themselves and other people too. One of the big parts of scientific thinking is trying to work out what causes things to happen. If we know what causes accidents, we can do something about it. We can’t stop every accident of course, but we can make things safer.

A good example is earthquakes. We can’t stop earthquakes, but we’ve worked out what sort of buildings fall down in earthquakes, and what sort of buildings stay up. That way it’s not fate, it’s good use of science that works out if you are safe in an earthquake.