Fluke: Contingency, Chaos, and the Limits of Social Science in an Accidental World

This event is part of the UCL200 programme of events celebrating UCL’s bicentenary.

About this inaugural lecture

How do chance events affect the trajectory of human history and our social world? In his inaugural lecture, Professor Brian Klaas will explore the role of contingency in explaining our extraordinarily complex societies and address two key questions: why do we so often ignore chance events in our scholarly explanations and can we ever truly understand a fundamentally chaotic world?

Spanning from coups, atomic bombs, and the rise of Donald Trump to chaos theory, the evolution of the human mind, and the perils of hyperconnected rapidly-changing modern societies, this lecture will examine how chaotic, contingent events shape our world far more than we tend to realise—and far more than professional incentives and methods in academia allow us to acknowledge. 

Professor Klaas will explain why he labels himself as a “disillusioned social scientist” in a career that has morphed from studying dictators, despots, and the nature of power through field work to a more recent focus on how complexity science and evolutionary principles can help us better understand our world. 

The talk will trace core lessons Professor Klaas has learned about the perils of flawed social science research—and the limits of our knowledge in a bewilderingly complex world.

2026 marks UCL’s 200th anniversary and a year of bicentennial activity and celebration. Visit the UCL200 website to explore the full programme and learn how you can get involved.