Interested to read Ric's remarks on chance. The question of what the word
random might mean is difficult to answer. As far as calculators or
computers are concerned, their so-called random number generators display a
particular term from an obscure but completely determined mathematical
sequence. One can choose to enter the sequence at different points and make
a connection between consciousness and chance but the concept is hardly any
the more illuminated. A conception of randomness as that which cannot be
known is also available. Again the definition is in terms of mind. (Was
there no randomness then before life in any form began?) Even that classic
example of chance, the result of tossing a coin, is in principle
predictable, Newton's laws being an acceptable approximation of all the
quantum and relativistic hoo-ha underlying the operation. A slippery
concept indeed. Another view is that it is connected with frequency, i.e.
in a purely random situation no pattern should emerge so that different
outcomes should appear with, over enough (!) time, similar frequencies.
This is related to the pleasant discovery that the digits of an irrational
number proceed entirely randomly. One mathematician learnt this to his cost
when his calculation of pi to hundreds of decimal places was shown to be
wrong, the demonstration taking no more work that showing that the number
three appeared too often. (My books are in boxes or I could check his name
and exhibit depth of erudition.)This is a rare example of randomness that is
not intimately connected with some principle of selection and so avoids the
question of who is doing said selecting. However, even sequences like
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,... can be the outcome of a random process. The fact that we
fancy that we see "the" pattern is incidental.
In terms of writing, random procedures have all kinds of merits. For one,
they undermine the deadly seriousness of it all. The omniscient author is
made stand in the corner. The deepest sincerity meets its dipstick at last.
And the writer might actually surprise him-or-her-self.
It was Proclus Diadochus who first made the existence of irrationals public
(Scholium to Book X of Euclid V) and so was held in odium. He died in a
shipwreck.
best wishes
Randolph
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