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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Is randomness natural?
Message-ID: <946@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 09:44:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.946
Posted: Thu Jun 13 09:44:15 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Jun-85 00:42:38 EDT
References: <371@iham1.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 26

>    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....

   What are you talking about?  Up until the last sentence, it just looked
like harmless blathering, but the last sentence seems like it could come only
from someone with serious misconceptions about how physics works.  Yes, in
your Physics 101 homework, you always end up working with point masses, point
charges, etc., but that's not because the laws of physics don't work for many 
bodies.  It's just to make the problems easier for you to do.  Maybe you
were referring to the unsolved n-body problem, but that too refers only to
the difficulty of solving the equations for the motions of n bodies in their
mutual gravitational fields, *not* to a failure of the laws of physics.
>    --------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Most of what Karl Marx said cannot be tested.
>   That which can be tested is wrong.
> 
>                             Patrick Wyant

    That which can be tested is wrong???  So why bother testing anything?
I mean, if you can test it, it must be wrong, right?
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
ihnp4!mhuxt!js2j
    "It's a hard rain a-gonna fall." - Dylan