Accidents and acts of God: A history of the terms

Despite criticism from safety professionals, scientists continue to use the word accident, meaning an unexpected, unintended injury or event. Some argue for its use based on tradition, but ''traditional'' arguments appear to be invalid given our examination of the history of the word and its companion phase act of God in statistics, law, and religion. People who were interested in public health recognized in the 1600s that unintended injuries were neither random or unexpected. Legal scholars in the 1800s saw the word was useless for technical purposes. The word does not appear in the Bible until the mid-1900s, and then only in a paraphrased edition. Others have maintained that the meaning of accident is well understood, even though it has not been perfectly defined. We maintain that without a clear definition, people substitute an image, which may be distorted or damaging.