My mother is fond of saying, "Everything happens for a reason." I agree with her, but not in the way you'd think.
She, unlike myself, is a theist. The "reason" she attributes everything to ultimately boils down to nothing short of a divine plan authored by some all-knowing being. As a loud, snooty man on Fox News is fond of saying, "the sun goes up and comes down", and that's enough to ascribe an invisible father figure to it all.
I'm somewhat of a determinist. Now I don't think there's an ultimate plan for anything -- I'm no fatalist. But I do think things happen for reasons we can either explain, or can't (yet?). Say, casting a handful of dice. Natural forces determine how the dice will fall; everything from the strength and angle of your hand, to its height above the table, to the material makeup of the dice and the surface, to air pressure, to the tilt of the earth, and any number of other factors. But that does not mean that it's written somewhere ahead of time "On March 21, 2011, STA will throw a 2, 4, and 5 on 3d6." We can't really process all the factors in a seemingly random event, like a dice throw -- that's why we use them to determine random outcomes. If we really could process it all, it wouldn't seem random.
Therefore, I don't really believe in randomness. We might not know or understand all the circumstances for an event, but I don't think we can accurately say a thing just randomly happens. Even quantum mechanics might have some extenuating circumstances that lie beyond a certain complexity boundary for its seemingly random goings-on. I see randomness as a label that we put on too-hard-to-calculate events.
Sure, things happen for a reason. But those reasons have reasons themselves, and they've nothing to do with gods or magic. There may be a reason for everything, but it's just a whole lot bigger than you or I can comprehend...without the need for God.
-STA
2 comments:
"Therefore, I don't really believe in randomness. We might not know or understand all the circumstances for an event, but I don't think we can accurately say a thing just randomly happens. Even quantum mechanics might have some extenuating circumstances that lie beyond a certain complexity boundary for its seemingly random goings-on. I see randomness as a label that we put on too-hard-to-calculate events"
Sorry, you're using "science of the gaps" here. So far science states with an extremely high certainty that individual quantum events are random. As a group , we can and do measureprobab mathematically pattern – for example, radioactive decay of Carbon 14 into Carbon 12.
As a large group (say a lump of coal) we can date by the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12. However, if you isolate a Carbon 14 atom, we have no means to predict (in theory or physically) when the decay event occurs for that particular Carbon 14 atom – it happens RANDOMLY.
- fastthumbs
If you want to call it "science of the gaps", I suppose that's okay. I take the metaphysical naturalist view: I don't think that whatever randomness is involves anything supernatural or other than nature and natural processes. Maybe randomness really is "random". Maybe it involves things we don't yet understand. The point I was making is that it's not supernatural or magic.
Post a Comment