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From: gjphw@iham1.UUCP (wyant)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Is randomness natural?
Message-ID: <371@iham1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 16:14:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: iham1.371
Posted: Wed Jun 12 16:14:50 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 02:54:32 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 71


    Just for a change of pace, I thought that I might raise a question that is
 important to the investigation and practice of science and see how the
 creationists and evolutionists respond.  This is the issue of what constitutes
 a fundamental assumption or phenomena of nature that does not require any
 further explanation.  Often it is the hidden assumptions that thwart effective
 scientific investigations.  One specific phenomena that seems to be a good
 candidate for treatment is randomness (entropy).  I was reminded of this topic
 by a recent speaker at my church who expressed the sentiment that God Makes
 Coincidences (GMC), implying that randomness is merely a statement of our
 ignorance of details and purposes.

    Prior to Galileo's time, for those who were interested in thinking about
 it, circular motion was seen as natural and perfect.  It required no further
 explanation.  All planetary motion was constructed of circles because this was
 natural motion.  Straight line motion was deemed imperfect and thus deserving
 of further explanation (or excuses).

    One of the cultural elements that I. Newton sought to overthrow was the
 view that circular motion is natural (someone asked once what framework did
 Newton have to struggle against; circles in celestial motion is one paradigm
 that he had to fight to overthrow).  Newton claimed that straight line motion
 was natural, and that objects moved in circles or ellipses in response to
 other effects.  The force of gravitation was then introduced to explain the
 alteration of straight line motion into elliptical orbits for planetary
 bodies.

    Thanks in part to the success of Newton's formulation for the motion of
 objects (and the expanding industry of clockmaking), the seventeenth and
 eighteen centuries (the age of F. Bacon) held a world view that, as Newton's
 Laws provided precise descriptions of nature, all behavior is capable of
 similar precise and exact description.  This view considers all behavior to be
 describable from a set of laws and an adequate knowledge of the past.  A
 metaphysical analogue of classical physics could be discovered to exactly
 predict anything.  Note that this is a cultural extension of physics, that it
 does not reflect any established scientific principle, and that it persisted
 well through the nineteenth century.

    Theists added that while we mere mortals may not acquire sufficient
 knowledge for this task, certainly God possesses this knowledge.  All objects
 and phenomena are but parts of a grand clock that points to the clockmaker (an
 attitude quite prevalent even before the Industrial Revolution).  Randomness
 is our expression that in many interactions all of the predecessors or laws
 are not known to us.

    To the small contemporary group that studies the consequences of the second
 law of thermodynamics, randomness is a essential property.  It has structure
 and limits that can be characterized and explained.  The known laws of physics
 are adequate for point interactions but fail for many-body interactions.
 Randomness is an observed property of nature that refutes the argument of an
 universe made by design.  The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics is a
 manifestation of limited randomness.

    The question at hand concerns the nature of randomness.  Do creationists
 hold that randomness is a failure of science, that design exists behind the
 apparent randomness?  Do evolutionists see a need for randomness as a
 fundamental property of nature?  Does randomness have structure or limits?
 Does randomness require further explanation?  Is the presence of randomness an
 argument for or against natural evolution?

    Any comment?

   --------------------------------------------------------------------

  Most of what Karl Marx said cannot be tested.
  That which can be tested is wrong.


                            Patrick Wyant
                            AT&T Bell Laboratories (Naperville, IL)
                            *!iham1!gjphw